This study aimed to synthesize frailty prevalence among community-dwelling older adults in Asia and identify factors influencing prevalence estimates. Five electronic databases were searched by 29 April 2022, including representative samples of community-dwelling adults who were aged 60 years and older and lived in Asia. Cross-sectional or national longitudinal population-based cohort studies completed with validated instruments were selected. Twenty-one studies with 52,283 participants were included. The pooled prevalence rate of frailty was 20.5% (95% CI = 15.5% to 26.0%). The estimated frailty prevalence was 14.6% (95% CI = 10.9% to 18.8%) while assessed by the Fried frailty phenotype, 28.0% (95% CI = 21.3% to 35.3%) by the Cumulative Frailty Index, 36.4% (95% CI = 33.6% to 39.3%) by the Study of Osteoporotic Fractures (SOF) index, and 46.3% (95% CI = 40.1% to 52.4%) by the Clinical Frailty Scale (p < 0.01). Subgroup analysis in studies using the Fried’s phenotype tool found that frailty prevalence was increased with older age (p = 0.01) and was higher in those who were single (21.5%) than in married participants (9.0%) (p = 0.02). The study results supported a better understanding of frailty prevalence in different geographical distributions and provide references for health policy decision-making regarding preventing frailty progression in older adults.
Keywords: community dwelling; frailty; meta-analysis; older adults; prevalence; systematic review.