Physiological phenotyping of frailty using MRI.
Joseph Taylor, PhD funded by the MRC/Versus Arthritis Centre for Musculoskeletal Ageing Research (CMAR), and support from NIHR Nottingham BRC.
Supervisors Professor Paul Greenhaff, Professor Sue Francis, Professor John Gladman
Due to the ageing nature of our population, an increasing number of people are at risk of frailty. Frailty is defined as a clinical state of enhanced vulnerability when exposed to a stressor and results in increased dependency. Frailty is prevalent in the elderly and is significantly associated with adverse events such as falls, hospitalisation and mortality. Accordingly, strategies to identify and combat the condition are of upmost importance. Despite clear health risks associated with the syndrome, the underlying physiological characteristics (i.e. the ‘phenotype’) of frailty remain poorly understood. This is hindering the development of scientifically based interventions to prevent and reverse frailty.
Frailty is becoming recognised as resulting from decline in a number of body systems. The aim of this project is to understand better the physiological phenotype of frailty by comparing non-frail and frail older individuals, which will hopefully delineate better the physiological progression from health to frailty. This project will utilise MRI techniques to determine numerous structural and functional characteristics of key organs (e.g. brain/skeletal muscle volumes and cerebral/cardiac perfusion) in non-frail and frail individuals. These comprehensive and in-depth physiological assessments will be dovetailed with measurements of cognition, skeletal muscle function and motor unit size, to provide novel insight into the frailty condition. The purpose of this multi-modal approach is to elucidate the typical nature and magnitude of physiological and functional dysregulation exhibited during frailty. Future studies may then be designed to target specific physiological traits with interventions with the aim of diminishing the syndrome’s progression.