ArticleBMC medicine2022
Sex-specific patterns and lifetime risk of multimorbidity in the general population: a 23-year prospective cohort study.
Article in BMC medicine, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 24 citations in OpenAlex.
- Sex differences in multimorbidity: a systematic review and meta-analysis.BMC public health · 2026Pooled it
- Multimorbidity and health related quality of life in midlife - a longitudinal study from Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1966.Scandinavian journal of primary health care · 2026Article
- Multimorbidity Clusters Among People Aged 65 Years and Over in Australia: A Nationwide Cross-Sectional Data Linkage Study.The Medical journal of Australia · 2026Article
- Morbidity Among the Aging Population in Northern Bangladesh: An Epidemiological Study.Aging medicine (Milton (N.S.W)) · 2026Article
- Relative Leukocyte Telomere Length Is Associated with Multimorbidity Burden in Older Adults: Evidence for Sex-Specific Associations.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Article
- Co-expressed MicroRNAs Associated with An Elevated Psychometabolic Risk Phenotype in Women during Midlife.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Sex differences in psychological distress and its risk factors among US adult Black and White immigrants, NHIS 2005-2018.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Co-expressed microRNAs associated with elevated psychometabolic risk phenotype in women during midlife.Frontiers in endocrinology · 2026Article
- Immune Signatures of Smoking: Cytokine and Immunoglobulin Dysregulation and Partial Reversibility in a Population-Based Study.Journal of clinical immunology · 2025Article
- Association between multimorbidity and young-onset dementia: a prospective study.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Network dynamics of metabolic disease continuum in older adults: a 7-year longitudinal cohort study in China.BMC geriatrics · 2025Article
- Does lifestyle explain the relationship between socioeconomic position and multimorbidity of cancer and cardiometabolic diseases? A mediation analysis applied to the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition.Journal of epidemiology and community health · 2025Article
- Foods, Mediterranean diet, and risk of multimorbidity: results from a large population-based cohort study.Nutrition journal · 2025Article
- Association of multimorbidity trajectories from early adulthood through middle age with middle-age physical function.The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences · 2025Article
- Characterizing a heterogeneous chronic patient population for redesigning person-centred bundled payment models using risk-mitigating measures.The European journal of health economics : HEPAC : health economics in prevention and care · 2025Article
- Article
- Charting the Pathways of Cardiometabolic Multimorbidity: A Systematic Review of Clinical Trajectories.Journal of clinical medicine · 2025Review
- Article
- Educational inequalities in multimorbidity at older ages: a multi-generational population-based study.European journal of public health · 2024Article
- Association between healthy eating and depression symptoms among Chinese older adults: A cross-sectional study based on the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity survey.Preventive medicine reports · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
13 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundMultimorbidity poses a major challenge for care coordination. However, data on what non-communicable diseases lead to multimorbidity, and whether the lifetime risk differs between men and women are lacking. We determined sex-specific differences in multimorbidity patterns and estimated sex-specific lifetime risk of multimorbidity in the general population.
methodsWe followed 6,094 participants from the Rotterdam Study aged 45 years and older for the occurrence of ten diseases (cancer, coronary heart disease, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, depression, diabetes, dementia, asthma, heart failure, parkinsonism). We visualised participants' trajectories from a single disease to multimorbidity and the most frequent combinations of diseases. We calculated sex-specific lifetime risk of multimorbidity, considering multimorbidity involving only somatic diseases (1) affecting the same organ system, (2) affecting different organ systems, and (3) multimorbidity involving depression.
resultsOver the follow-up period (1993-2016, median years of follow-up 9.2), we observed 6334 disease events. Of the study population, 10.3% had three or more diseases, and 27.9% had two or more diseases. The most frequent pair of co-occurring diseases among men was COPD and cancer (12.5% of participants with multimorbidity), the most frequent pair of diseases among women was depression and dementia (14.9%). The lifetime risk of multimorbidity was similar among men (66.0%, 95% CI: 63.2-68.8%) and women (65.1%, 95% CI: 62.5-67.7%), yet the risk of multimorbidity with depression was higher for women (30.9%, 95% CI: 28.4-33.5%, vs. 17.5%, 95% CI: 15.2-20.1%). The risk of multimorbidity with two diseases affecting the same organ is relatively low for both sexes (4.2% (95% CI: 3.2-5.5%) for men and 4.5% (95% CI: 3.5-5.7%) for women).
conclusionsTwo thirds of people over 45 will develop multimorbidity in their remaining lifetime, with women at nearly double the risk of multimorbidity involving depression than men. These findings call for programmes of integrated care to consider sex-specific differences to ensure men and women are served equally.
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