Professor Alan Sinclair has launched the Diabetes Frail project to further explore the emerging importance of frailty as a better-defined concept in ageing populations and its association with diabetes.

Diabetes and frailty may be causally related and operate through each of the key components of the frailty phenotype or via the associated medical co-morbidities.

The presence of frailty in a setting of diabetes increases the level of disability and leads to poorer clinical outcomes. The vascular complications of diabetes (both macro and microvascular) are implicated in this aetiopathogenesis of frailty and any associated mood disturbance or cognitive impairments worsen the outcome.