Frailty is one of the major health problems facing aging societies worldwide. We investigated the association between serum SIRT6 and frailty in older adults.

Cross-sectional analysis of associations of serum SIRT6 and frailty in older people.

Enrolled community-dwelling and hospital outpatient clinic adults older than 65 years old in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China.

A total of 540 community-dwelling older adults (age ≥ 65 years) in Wuhan were included in the study.

We used Frailty Phenotype criteria for classifying participants based on their frailty status. Serum SIRT6 was measured using an ELISA kit.

A total of 540 older adults were included in this cross-sectional study. Serum SIRT6 was lower in the slowness group (7.23±1.81 vs 5.89±1.74, p<0.001), weakness group (6.87±1.88 vs 5.68±1.64, p<0.001), and exhaustion group (6.73±1.90 vs 5.88±1.74, p<0.001) compare with the normal group. ROC curves were used to assess the efficiency of SIRT6 in predicting frailty in older adults. The AUC for SIRT6 was 0.792 (95% CI: 0.7514 to 0.8325), with the highest sensitivity of 68.0% and the specificity of 91.9%, and the optimal critical value of 4.65ng/ml according to Youden's index. Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that serum SIRT6 level was independently associated with frailty in older people.

In conclusion, serum SIRT6 was decreased in frailty compared with robust older adults. A decreased serum SIRT6 was independently associated with an increased risk of frailty. SIRT6 may be a potential target for the treatment of patients with frailty.