Background: Vitality is conceptually considered as the underlying capacity influencing other intrinsic capacity (IC) domains and being related to nutrition, physiological reserve and biological ageing. However, there is no consensus on its operationalisation.
Objective: To investigate the structure and magnitude of the association of vitality with other IC domains and functional difficulties using three operational definitions of vitality.
Methods: We included 1,389 older adults from the Multidomain Alzheimer Preventive Trial with data on Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA), handgrip strength and plasma biomarkers (comprising inflammatory and mitochondrial markers). Using path analysis, we examined the effects of vitality on difficulties in basic and instrumental activities of daily living (ADL and IADL) exerted directly and indirectly through the mediation of other IC domains: cognition, locomotion, psychological, vision and hearing. We further explored the longitudinal association of vitality with IC domains, ADL and IADL over 4 years using linear mixed-effect regression.
Results: We observed significant indirect effects of vitality on IADL, mainly through cognitive, locomotor and psychological domains, regardless of the vitality measurement. Participants with higher vitality had fewer IADL difficulties at follow-up (MNA score: β [95% CI] = -0.020 [-0.037, -0.003]; handgrip strength: -0.011 [-0.023, 0.000]; plasma biomarker-based index: -0.015 [-0.028, -0.002]). Vitality assessed with the plasma biomarker-based index predicted improved locomotion over time.
Conclusion: Vitality was associated with disability primarily through the mediation of other IC domains. The three indicators examined are acceptable measurements of vitality; biomarkers might be more suitable for the early detection of locomotion decline.
Keywords: biological ageing; disability; healthy ageing; inflammation; older people; structural equation modelling.
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