Patterns of Coexistence of Multiple Chronic Conditions among Chinese Elderly

Abstract

Background With the aging and longer survival of the population, comorbid chronic diseases is increasingly common. The variety and complexity of diseases pose challenges to the health management of the elderly. There is a relative lack of multimorbidity pattern researches in China, which are necessary issues for research. Objective To investigate the patterns of coexistence of common multiple chronic conditions among the elderly in China, in order to help policymakers, researchers, and clinicians better understand the current status of multimorbidity among Chinese elderly. Methods Data on the demographic characteristics and health status of 14 chronic diseases were extracted from the respondents aged 60 years and above in the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) 2018, association rules, cluster analysis, principal component analysis, latent class analysis were used to explore the multimorbidity patterns of Chinese elderly, and the results of different methods were compared. Results The data from a total of 10 800 respondents were eventually included, there were differences among the patterns obtained by four methods. However, the consistent multimorbidity patterns were identified: hypertension, diabetes or elevated blood glucose, dyslipidemia; chronic lung disease and asthma; arthritis or rheumatism, stomach diseases or digestive diseases; stroke, memory-related diseases. Conclusion The consistent patterns obtained by different methods contain chronic diseases with significant relationships of etiologies. The reasons of differences in results are complex etiologic relationships and different method principles.

Keywords

• chronic disease|multiple chronic conditions|comorbidity|association rules|clustering analysis|latent class analysis