Descriptive epidemiology of multimorbidity

Many people have more than one chronic health problem. These diseases add up, and the combined effect is more important than the effect of any one problem alone. We do not know how common these disease combinations are, or which diseases occur together. We also do not know if they are more common in older people, or in people with lower income or education. We will therefore determine which diseases occur together, if these disease clusters are more common in older people, or in people with lower income or education. We will use the Canadian Longitudinal Study of Aging for these analyses.

In analyzing the data we found that: multimorbidity is common; there is a social gradient across education and income which is slightly more pronounced in females versus males; and multimorbidity is strongly associated with advancing age.