It seems logical that older adults with extensive chronic illness or serious disease would have a poorer quality of life than their healthier counterparts, but this isn’t necessarily the case, a new study finds.

Researchers examined three groups of participants enrolled in the Cardiovascular Health Study, a large research project that examined adults 65-years-old and older from four cities around the country.

Researchers assigned people to one of three groups, based on the extent of their disease and their level of vigor or frailty and this is what they discovered:

•    The expected agers (3,528 people) had higher disease but also higher frailty levels. They spent 47 percent of the remainder of their lives able and healthy.
•    The adapters (882 people) had higher disease levels as well as relatively high vigor (being active and mobile) levels. They spent 55 percent of the reminder of their lives able and healthy.

•    The prematurely frail (885 people) had lower disease levels but higher frailty levels. They spent 37 percent of their remaining lives able and healthy.


The "adapter" older adults who were more vigorous than expected, based on their disease burden, lived longer lives when compared to those who were more frail than expected based on their disease burden, the researchers say.

These "adapters" could have unique characteristics, perhaps some undefined coping mechanism, which should be studied further in hopes of helping others, the researchers said of their study, which appears in the Journal of the American Geriatric Society.