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Abstract
Objectives Whether the association between obesity-related anthropometric indices and multimorbidity differs by age among Chinese older adults (aged 65+) is unclear. We aimed to investigate the association between body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC) and waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) with multimorbidity among the young-old (aged 65–79) and old-old (aged 80+) adults.
Design Cross-sectional population-based study.
Setting Shandong province on the eastern coast of China.
Participants 5493 subjects aged 65 years or above.
Measurements Details on sociodemographics, lifestyle characteristics and chronic conditions were collected using a structured questionnaire. The respondents were assessed with anthropometric measurements including height, weight, WC, hip circumference.
Results The overall prevalence of multimorbidity in older adults (aged 65+) was 35.2%. The BMI-obesity, WC-obesity and WHR-obesity rates were 7.4%, 57.5% and 80.4%, respectively. In the young-old adults (aged 65–79), the likelihood of multimorbidity was more than two times higher among the BMI-obese than the BMI-normal population (OR 2.08, 95% CI 1.66 to 2.60). Similar but less strong associations were found for the WC-obese and WHR-obese young-old population (OR 1.60, 95% CI 1.42 to 1.81; OR 1.31, 95% CI 1.10 to 1.56, respectively). For the old-old group (aged 80+), the BMI-obese, WC-obese and WHR-obese had a higher likelihood of having multimorbidity compared with the normal weight category (OR 2.10, 95% CI 0.96 to 4.57; OR 1.75, 95% CI 1.21 to 2.54; OR 2.15, 95% CI 1.18 to 3.93, respectively).
Conclusion BMI-obesity, WC-obesity and WHR-obesity were associated with a greater risk of multimorbidity, and the associations were different between the young-old and the old-old adults. These age differences need to be considered in assessing healthy body weight in old age. These findings may be vital for public health surveillance, prevention and management strategies for multimorbidity in older adults.
- public health
- preventive medicine
- epidemiology
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Footnotes
Contributors JZ performed the statistical analysis and drafted the initial manuscript, LX and JL provided the concept and design of study. LS and WQ was involved in the analysis and interpretation of data and revised the manuscript for important intellectual content. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Funding Our work was supported by two grants of National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant numbers: 71673169 and 71673170) and NHC Key Laboratory of Health Economics and Policy Research (Shandong University) (NHC-HEPR2019015).
Competing interests None declared.
Patient and public involvement Patients and/or the public were not involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting, or dissemination plans of this research.
Patient consent for publication Not required.
Ethics approval The Ethical Committee of Shandong University School of Public Health approved the study protocol (No. 20170110).
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Data availability statement Data are available on reasonable request. Data are available on reasonable request to corresponding author (email: lzxu@sdu.edu.cn).