Multimorbidity and its associated factors among adults aged 50 and over: a crosssectional study in 17 European countries

• Autor(a) principal: Souza, Dyego Leandro Bezerra de
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Outros Autores: Fabregas, Albert Oliveras, Espelt, Albert, Prous, Marina Bosque, Cancela, Marianna de Camargo, Compaño, Ester Teixido, Roig, Javier Jerez
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UFRN
• Texto Completo: https://repositorio.ufrn.br/handle/123456789/54836; https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0246623
• topic: Loneliness; multimorbidity; adults aged 50 and over; multimorbidade

To estimate the prevalence of multimorbidity among European community-dwelling adults, as well as to analyse the association with gender, age, education, self-rated health, loneliness, quality of life, size of social network, Body Mass Index (BMI) and disability. Methods A cross-sectional study based on wave 6 (2015) of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) was conducted, and community-dwelling participants aged 50+ (n = 63,844) from 17 European countries were selected. Multimorbidity was defined as presenting two or more health conditions. The independent variables were gender, age group, educational level, self-rated health, loneliness, size of network, quality of life, BMI and disability (1+ limitations of basic activities of daily living). Poisson regression models with robust variance were fit for bivariate and multivariate analysis. Results: The prevalence of multimorbidity was 28.2% (confidence interval–CI 95%: 27.5.8–29.0) among men and 34.5% (CI95%: 34.1–35.4) among women. The most common health conditions were cardiometabolic and osteoarticular diseases in both genders, and emotional disorders in younger women. A large variability in the prevalence of multimorbidity in European countries was verified, even between countries of the same region. Conclusions: Multimorbidity was associated with sociodemographic and physical characteristics, self-rated health, quality of life and loneliness