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Multicenter Study
. 2021 Feb 11;16(2):e0246623.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0246623. eCollection 2021.

Multimorbidity and its associated factors among adults aged 50 and over: A cross-sectional study in 17 European countries

Dyego Leandro Bezerra de Souza  1   2   3 , Albert Oliveras-Fabregas  3   4 , Albert Espelt  5   6   7 , Marina Bosque-Prous  8 , Marianna de Camargo Cancela  9 , Ester Teixidó-Compañó  5 , Javier Jerez-Roig  2   3
Affiliations
Multicenter Study

Multimorbidity and its associated factors among adults aged 50 and over: A cross-sectional study in 17 European countries

Dyego Leandro Bezerra de Souza et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Aims: 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.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Prevalence of number of diseases per country and gender in community-dwelling people aged 50 and over.
A) Males; and B) Females.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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