The Carlos III Health Institute (ISCIII) has been part of international research that concludes that the deterioration of social ties and social roles increases the probability of death, regardless of the presence of chronic diseases or the advanced age of older people.
The work, disseminated in two scientific articles, has been published, on the one hand, this year in the journal "BMC Geriatrics" and, on the other, in 2025 in "Annals of Geriatric Medicine and Research". The study has focused on the elderly population of Colombia and includes among its authors researchers from the National Center for Epidemiology (CNE) of the ISCIII, Maria João Forjaz and Carmen Rodríguez-Blázquez.
The experts emphasize the concept of "social fragility", distinct from mere loneliness or lack of economic resources, since it refers to the progressive deterioration of resources, roles, and social participation of older people. It is a form of vulnerability that coexists with physical frailty and until recently had scarcely been recognized in Latin American countries.
The study, led by the member of the International Doctorate School IMIENS of the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED) in Madrid, Hernán-David García-Botina, has been developed from data from the "National Survey of Health, Well-being and Aging" (SABE Colombia, 2015). The project has been carried out within the framework of a predoctoral stay of the International Doctorate School of the Mixed Institute IMIENS (UNED-ISCIII), with funding from the ISCIII and support from the RICAPPS Network and the project "ENCAGES-CM".
Results of the analysis in the Colombian older population
By limiting the analysis to 3,213 people aged 60 or over residing in the departments of Antioquia, Caldas, Risaralda and Quindío, the regions with the highest proportion of the country’s ageing population, the research has observed that those who were classified as socially fragile showed an 18 percent higher risk of dying during the follow-up period. This association remained even after adjusting for age, sex, chronic pathologies and socioeconomic level.
According to the authors, this result “means that social fragility acts through its own mechanisms, probably through prolonged isolation, the lack of timely access to medical care, and the accumulated wear that comes from living without real support.” For this reason, they point out that “it is a different entity from physical frailty.”
Along these lines, they emphasize that “incorporating an assessment of social frailty in a routine manner could make it possible to identify people at higher risk before it is too late and design interventions that, for once, also address the human dimension of aging.”