Introduction The increase in the percentage of older adults is increasing more rapidly today in the developing world than previously occurred in the developed nations. These trends have important implications for understanding the mechanisms of population ageing and for all aspects of contemporary life. Frailty is considered to be a wasting syndrome that elevates the risk for a variety of adverse outcomes.

Objectives Using Fried's model, identify frailty syndrome and associated factors in Brazilian older adults.

Methods Data comes from a longitudinal survey—SABE (Health, Well-being and Ageing), with a multistage clustered sample of 1413 people aged ≥65 years-old in Sao Paulo-Brazil in 2006. Frailty was defined as the presence of 3 or+ of five criteria of the Fried's model, unintentional weight loss, exhaustion, weakness, slowness and low physical activity. Pre-frail was defined as the presence of one/two items. Multivariable linear regressions identified associated factors with frailty at baseline.

Results Prevalence of pre-frail was 45.9% and frailty was 12.9%. Associated factors adjusted by age and gender included less education (OR=2.40, p=0.03); fair/poor self-reported health (OR=2.81/3.63, p=0.01), stroke (OR=6.54, p=0.02), depressive symptoms (OR=4.55, p<0.00), disability ≥1ADL (OR=2.79, p=0.02) and ≥1IADL (OR=3.81, p=0.04), hospitalisation last 12 months (OR=3.81, p=0.01). There was poor concordance between frailty and disability (3.4%) and modest with comorbidities (26.2%). These three conditions were present in 55.1% and frailty alone was identify in 15.2% of older.

Conclusion Recognition of associated factors with frailty syndrome may help to perform active prevention and intervention actions and, consequently, maximise older quality of life.