Open AccessAssessment of Sexuality and Frailty in Older Adults Living in Northeast Brazil
Author(s) -
Edison Vitório de Souza Júnior,
Gabriele da Silva Santos,
Suziane de Aguiar Brito,
Sterline Therrier,
Laís Reis Siqueira,
Namie Okino Sawada
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
aquichan
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.137
H-Index - 8
eISSN - 2027-5374
pISSN - 1657-5997
DOI - 10.5294/aqui.2022.22.1.8
Subject(s) - human sexuality , confidence interval , mann–whitney u test , medicine , correlation , older people , demography , gerontology , negative correlation , sexual intercourse , kruskal–wallis one way analysis of variance , psychology , population , environmental health , gender studies , geometry , mathematics , sociology
Objective: to evaluate the experiences of sexuality and its correlation with frailty among older adults.Materials and methods: cross-sectional study carried out with a total of 250 older adults living in the Northeast of Brazil. They answered three instruments to obtain biosociodemographic, sexuality and frailty data. The analysis was performed using Spearman correlation, Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis test with 95% confidence interval.Results: sexual intercourse was negatively correlated with reduced strength (ρ = -0.263; p < 0.001) and walking speed (ρ = -0.201; p = 0.001) and positively correlated with reported fatigue (ρ = 0.149; p = 0.018). Affective relationships were negatively correlated with reduced strength (ρ = -0.254; p < 0.001) and walking speed (ρ = -0.207; p = 0.001) and positively correlated with reported fatigue (ρ = 0.207; p = 0.001). Finally, physical and social adversities were positively correlated with reduced strength (ρ = 0.279; p < 0.001), reduced walking speed (ρ = 0.261; p < 0.001) and low physical activity (ρ = 0.140; p = 0.034), in addition to being negatively correlated with reported fatigue (ρ = -0.171; p = 0.009).Conclusion: it was found that the sexuality of older adults is better experienced in affective relationships and weak positive and negative correlations between sexuality and frailty.