Comorbidity Risk and Distribution Characteristics of Chronic Diseases in the Elderly in China

Abstract

Abstract Background The comorbidity risk of chronic diseases in the elderly is an important problem affecting the health of the elderly and quality of life. We try to analyze comorbidity risk and characteristics of major chronic diseases in 65+ elderly people in China using CLHLS(Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey) data in 2018. Methods First, we use the original data to construct a hypothetical cohort in the elderly with age. The complex network is used to reduce the dimensionality of diseases in male and female respectively; the multi-state transfer model is used to calculate the comorbidity of each chronic disease, exploring the comorbidity characteristics and rules. Results Seven chronic diseases of hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, chronic lung disease, arthritis and dyslipidemia in men, and of the above diseases, six chronic diseases except chronic lung disease in women showed significant comorbidity. The incidence show differences in age and gender, increase with age in completely healthy state, generally decline at about 98 years old. In the presence of other chronic diseases as basic diseases, the incidence of each disease increases with the increase of the number of chronic diseases. Conclusions (1) When hypertension is present as a basic disease, its impact on the risk of each chronic disease is much less than that of other chronic diseases; (2) For the elderly men, hypertension-heart disease, diabetes-dyslipidemia are two chronic disease combinations that have the greatest impact on each other; For elderly women, hypertension-heart is the only pair of disease combinations that have the greatest impact on each other.