Multimorbidity and cognition among Canadians: a three decades perspective

As life expectancy of the population increases and surviving disease is usual, the simultaneous occurrence of multiple chronic diseases, known as multimorbidity, becomes a new reality. Evidence has shown that cognitive decline is associated with multimorbidity. However, the current knowledge about the change of effect of multimorbidity through decades, the possible pathways of effect through increased vulnerability, a concept known as frailty, to further damage and the patterns of diseases that stronger affect cognition is scarce. In consequence, our objective is to evaluate how is multimorbidity associated with the decline in cognitive test scores in Canadian adults. Our focus will be to analyze the change of multimorbidity effect in cognition over the last 3 decades, to evaluate if the effect of multimorbidity on cognition is mediated through frailty, and to search for diseases’ combinations associated with cognitive decline.