2024  VOLUME 4  ISSUE 1

RESEARCH ARTICLE

The prevalence and evolution of binary multimorbidity pattern in middle-aged and elderly population in China, from an insight of health metrics

AUTHOR

Yu Wang, Xiaojun Hu

ABSTRACT

The prevention and management of chronic diseases multimorbidity has become a public health issue that needs to be focused on and addressed in the process of healthy aging. This paper analyzes the evolution of multimorbidity patterns in the middle-aged and elderly population aged ≥45 years old from the perspective of health metrics, based on CHARLS 2011-2020 data, using an association rule CARMA algorithm, in combination with a visual network presentation for the evolution of multimorbidity patterns and that in different classified populations. The results show that from 2011 to 2020, the prevalence of multimorbidity showed an overall increasing trend, with a multimorbidity prevalence of 37.41% in 2011 and 57.47% in 2020, and the top 3 chronic diseases with the highest prevalence of multimorbidity are arthritis or rheumatism, hypertension and digestive diseases. In addition, in five periods we observed, the prevalence of multimorbidity in all age groups showed an overall increasing trend; the prevalence of binary multimorbidity pattern in females is higher than that in males; people living in rural is of higher prevalence of multimorbidity than those living in the urban in most periods; farmers is of higher prevalence of multimorbidity than those with other occupations in most periods. The results suggest that effective prevention and management of multimorbidity is an urgent task in China, and individualized management plans should be formulated according to different age groups, genders, places of residence and personal habits.

KEYWORDS

Multimorbidity; Middle-aged and elderly; Big data; Health metrics

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