Objective: To identify currently available evidence on fruit and vegetable consumption in association with frailty by conducting a systematic review of the literature and to summarise and critically evaluate it.
Design: Systematic review.
Setting: Four electronic databases (Embase, MEDLINE, CINAHL and PsycINFO) were systematically searched in August 2017 for observational cohort studies providing cross-sectional or prospective associations between fruit and vegetable consumption and frailty risks. Additional studies were searched by manually reviewing the reference lists of the included studies and related review papers and conducting forward citation tracking of the included studies. The methodological quality of prospective studies was assessed using the Newcastle-Ottawa scale.
Participants: Community-dwelling general populations.
Results: A total of 6251 studies were identified, of which five prospective studies with follow-up periods of 2-10.5 years and two cross-sectional studies were included. Among the five prospective studies, three had adequate methodological quality. Because of different measurements and statistical methodologies, a meta-analysis was not possible. The two studies of good quality showed that fruit and vegetable consumption was mostly associated with lower risk of incident frailty. The other study as a sub-analysis retrospectively examined baseline fruit and vegetable consumption of those who developed frailty and those who did not at follow-up and showed no significant associations.
Conclusions: Although good quality studies on this topic are scarce, there is some suggestion that higher fruit and vegetable consumption may be associated with lower frailty risk. More high quality research is needed.
Keywords: Frailty; diet; fruits; nutrition; vegetables.