【Abstract】Objective To investigate the status quo of frailty and its influencing factors in the elderly patients with diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN). Methods The clinical data of 203 elderly DPN patients admitted to Qionghai Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine from September 2020 to September 2022 were retrospectively analyzed. The patients were divided into frailty group (n=58) and non-frailty group (n=145) according to the Physiological Frailty Assessment Scale and the differences in basic data and laboratory indicators between the two groups were compared. SPSS statistics 22.0 was used for data analysis. According to the data type, t test or χ² test was used to compare the groups. The predictive value of age and body mass index (BMI) for frailty in the elderly DPN patients was analyzed via receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. The risk factors of frailty in the elderly DPN patients were analyzed using multivariate logistic regression analysis. Results The proportion of women, those living alone or in nursing homes, unmarried/divorced/widowed, smoking, diabetic course≥ 10 years, anxiety or depression, sleep disorders, and other major or microvascular complications in the frailty group were significantly higher than those in the non-frailty group (χ²=11.106,15.304,20.382,23.889,12.931,9.633,33.274,7.337; P<0.05). Age of patients in frailty group was significantly higher than that in non-frailty group (t=22.653), and BMI was significantly lower than that in non-frailty group (t=2.621), with statistical significance (P<0.05). ROC analysis of age and BMI showed good predictive value for frailty in the elderly DPN patients, and the area under the curve was 0.986 (95%CI 0.974-0.998; P<0.05) and 0.898 (95%CI 0.856-0.940; P<0.05). Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that women (OR=1.067,95%CI 1.002-1.136), living alone or in nursing homes (OR=3.450,95%CI 1.206-9.869), unmarried/divorced/widowed (OR=3.045,95%CI 1.524-6.084), smoking (OR=1.566,95%CI 1.038-2.363), diabetes≥10 years (OR=1.389,95%CI 1.174-1.643), anxiety or depression (OR=2.783,95%CI 1.250-6.196), sleep disorder (OR=1.305,95%CI 1.194-1.426), other major or microvascular complications (OR=4.197,95%CI 1.669-10.554), age≥70.360 years (OR=1.873,95%CI 1.249-2.809) and BMI≤20.185 kg /m² (OR=4.246,95%CI 1.588-11.353) were the risk factors for frailty in the elderly DPN patients. Conclusion Elderly DPN patients have a high risk of frailty, its occurrence is affected by multiple factors, and clinicians should pay attention to it in the treatment of such patients.

This work was supported by the Key Research and Development Program of Hainan Province (ZDYF2021SHFZ229)