Does multimorbidity interfere with the functionality of the physically active elderly?

• Autor(a) principal: Vicentini de Oliveira, Daniel
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Outros Autores: Rosas Moreira, Caio, Freire, Gabriel Lucas Morais, Soares de Melo, Rogério, Fernandes Franco, Maura, do Nascimento Júnior, José Roberto Andrade
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Fisioterapia em Movimento
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.pucpr.br/fisio/article/view/26310

Introduction: Multimorbidity is currently considered as a relevant clinical condition due to its severity and the high prevalence among the elderly. Objective: Assessing whether multimorbidity is an intervening factor in the functionality of the physically active elderly. Method: This is a cross-sectional study carried out with 70 older people of both sexes who practice exercises at the Fitness zones (FZ) in the municipality of Maringá, state of Paraná. A sociodemographic questionnaire, and the World Health Organization Disability Assessment Scale (WHO-DAS 2.0) were used as instruments. Data analysis was performed by using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, Kruskal-Wallis test, Mann-Whitney test and Spearman’s rank correlation, in addition to the Path Analysis (p <0.05). Results: the elderly who have more than two diseases showed worse functionality than the ones with none or from 1 to 2 diseases (p <0.05). The number of diseases showed a significant association (p <0.05) with a reduction in functional domain scores, which explains from 15% to 31% of the variables variability. Specifically, the number of diseases was positively associated with the strong effect on the domains referred to as self-care (β = 0.56) and cognition (β = 0.55), besides a moderate effect on interpersonal relationships (β = 0.39) and social participation (β = 0.39) domains. Conclusion: it was concluded that multimorbity can be considered as an intervening factor in the functionality of elderly people who practice physical activity.