Multimorbidity Patterns and Their Association with Social Determinants, Mental and Physical Health during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Background: The challenge posed by multimorbidity makes it necessary to look at new forms of prevention, a fact that has become heightened in the context of the pandemic. We designed a questionnaire to detect multimorbidity patterns in people over 50 and to associate these patterns with mental and physical health, COVID-19, and possible social inequalities. Methods: This was an observational study conducted through a telephone interview. The sample size was 1592 individuals with multimorbidity. We use Latent Class Analysis to detect patterns and SF-12 scale to measure mental and physical quality-of-life health. We introduced the two dimensions of health and other social determinants in a multinomial regression model. Results: We obtained a model with five patterns (entropy = 0.727): ‘Relative Healthy’, ‘Cardiometabolic’, ‘Musculoskeletal’, ‘Musculoskeletal and Mental’, and ‘Complex Multimorbidity’. We found some differences in mental and physical health among patterns and COVID-19 diagnoses, and some social determinants were significant in the multinomial regression. Conclusions: We identified that prevention requires the location of certain inequalities associated with the multimorbidity patterns and how physical and mental health have been affected not only by the patterns but also by COVID-19. These findings may be critical in future interventions by health services and governments.

Creating a Modified Version of the Cambridge Multimorbidity Score (CMMS) to Predict Mortality in People Over 16 Years in the English Nationwide General Practice Extraction Service Data for Pandemic Planning and Research (GDPPR) Dataset: Model Development and Validation (Preprint)

“…have complex needs and impose increasing demands on primary care services given the ageing population. Multimorbidity is associated with reduced life expectancy [7], lower quality of life [8] and an increased risk of hospitalisation and death with COVID-19 [9]. In clinical trials, vaccination against COVID-19 showed reduced risk of hospitalisation and death in all groups [10,11].…”

Epidemiology, mortality, and health service use of local-level multimorbidity patterns in South Spain

“…Similarly, considering that previous studies does not provide a clear description of either the social mechanisms or the ecological effects involved in the association between the local area of residence and multimorbidity patterns, the need for studies that address the social context in which multimorbidity emerges and reproduces itself is evident 22,23 . Despite the growing recognition of multimorbidity as a public health concern, there remains to be more clarity surrounding the social mechanisms and ecological effects that contribute to the emergence and persistence of specific multimorbidity patterns.…”