Motoric cognitive risk (MCR) syndrome is originally defined as the presence of subjective cognitive complaints (SCCs) and slow gait (SG). MCR is well known to be useful for predicting adverse health outcomes, including falls and dementia. However, around four out of five older Korean adults reported SCCs, thereby, it may not be discriminative to define MCR in Korea. We adopted the three-item recall (3IR) test, instead of SCCs, to define MCR. This cross-sectional analysis included 2133 community-dwelling older adults aged 70-84 years, without dementia or any dependence in activities of daily living from the Korean Frailty and Aging Cohort Study. The newly attempted criteria of MCR using 3IR were met by 105 participants (4.9%). MCR using 3IR showed synergistic effects on fall-related outcomes, whereas the conventional definition of MCR using SCCs was not superior to SG only. MCR using 3IR was associated with falls (odds ratio [OR]: 1.92; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.16-3.16), recurrent falls (OR: 2.19; 95% CI: 1.12-4.32), falls with injury (OR: 1.98; 95% CI: 1.22-3.22), falls with fracture (OR: 2.51; 95% CI: 1.09-5.79), fear of falling (OR: 3.00; 95% CI: 1.83-4.92), and low activities-specific balance confidence (OR: 3.13; 95% CI: 1.57-6.25). We found that MCR using 3IR could be useful in predicting fall-related outcomes in a cultural background reporting more SCCs, such as Korea.
Keywords: cognitive function; fall; gait speed; motoric cognitive risk syndrome; older adults; three-item recall.