A new prospective: Exploring variability of conditional risk factors for multimorbidity susceptibility among older adults in India

Ajay Kumar, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)
Suryakant Yadav, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)

India is passing through the last stage of epidemiological transition with delayed mortality risk but expanding morbidity burden among older adults and further significantly elevated implications for multimorbidity susceptibility . We analyzed the national representative LASI, Wave-1, 2017–18, data, of adults aged >=45 years. Primarily, this study aims to understand the distribution, prevalence, and pattern of morbidities and multimorbidity. Second, we characterized and calculated the weighted frequency distribution, association and relative share of multimorbidity over age and finally, we constructed CART model to identify the optimal leading covariates and their conditional role for multimorbidity susceptibility among older adults in India. The CART model deducted that childhood health, residence, age, BMI, and caste were the leading risk factors for multimorbidity susceptibility. The highest susceptibility of multimorbidity with a risk of 0.57 was observed among individuals who had moderate to poor childhood health. Conversely, the adults who had good childhood health and lived in rural had a normal to underweight BMI and belonged to the Schedule tribe had the lowest risk of multimorbidity (0.19). Moreover, hypertension (26.72%) showed the highest burden and single morbidity prevalence was 23.78%, followed by multimorbidity (50.94%). Relative prevalence share of multimorbidity over age expanded by 25.16 % from 45 to 85+ age group.

Keywords: Health and Morbidity, Population Ageing, Longitudinal studies , Mortality and Longevity

See paper.