Tall stature in coronary heart disease patients is associated with decreased risk of frailty in late life

Aim We investigated the possible inverse association between tall stature and subsequent late‐life frailty. Methods A subset of surviving men with coronary heart disease ( n = 1232; mean age at baseline 57.0 ± 6.0 years), who previously participated in the Bezafibrate Infarction Prevention clinical trial (1990–1997) were reassessed during 2004–2008 (T1; n = 558) and 2011–2013 (T2; n = 351) at the mean ages of 72.6 ± 6.4 years and 77.2 ± 6.4 years, respectively. Frailty status was measured at T2 according to the physical phenotype developed by Fried, and was categorized into non‐frail, prefrail and frail. We estimated the odds ratios of increasing frailty by tertiles of height at baseline. Results Among 351 patients, 117 (33.3%) were classified as non‐frail, 134 (38.2%) as prefrail and 100 (28.5%) as frail. Frailty was found among 21% of participants at the highest tertile, 33% at the middle tertile and 46% at the lowest tertile for height ( P for trend = 0.002). Adjusting for age, weight, place of birth, education, blood pressure, New York Heart Association classification functional class and comorbidity score, the estimated OR for increasing frailty for participants in the highest tertile was 0.32 (95% CI 0.17–0.59) and for those at the middle tertile 0.46 (95% CI 0.27–0.79), as compared with the lowest tertile. An increment of 1 SD of height was associated with a 38% (95% CI 18–53%) decrease in frailty odds. Conclusion Among men with coronary heart disease, tall stature was associated with lower adjusted odds of late‐life frailty. Geriatr Gerontol Int 2017; 17: 1270–1277 .