Dynamic statistical model for predicting the risk of death among older Chinese people, using longitudinal repeated measures of the frailty index: a prospective cohort study

Abstract Background Frailty is a common characteristic of older people with the ageing process. We aimed to develop and validate a dynamic statistical prediction model to calculate the risk of death in people aged ≥65 years, using a longitudinal frailty index (FI). Methods One training dataset and three validation datasets from the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS) were used in our study. The training dataset and validation datasets 1 to 3 included data from 9,748, 7,459, 9,093 and 6,368 individuals, respectively. We used 35 health deficits to construct the FI and a longitudinal FI based on repeated measurement of FI at every wave of the CLHLS. A joint model was used to build a dynamic prediction model considering both baseline covariates and the longitudinal FI. Areas under time-dependent receiver operating characteristic curves (AUCs) and calibration curves were employed to assess the predictive performance of the model. Results A linear mixed-effects model used time, sex, residence (city, town, or rural), living alone, smoking and alcohol consumption to calculate a subject-specific longitudinal FI. The dynamic prediction model was built using the longitudinal FI, age, residence, sex and an FI–age interaction term. The AUCs ranged from 0.64 to 0.84, and both the AUCs and the calibration curves showed good predictive ability. Conclusions We developed a dynamic prediction model that was able to update predictions of the risk of death as updated measurements of FI became available. This model could be used to estimate the risk of death in individuals aged >65 years.