Multimorbidity patterns are differentially associated with functional ability and decline in a longitudinal cohort of older women

摘要

Methods: we included 7,270 participants of the older cohort of the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health, who were surveyed every 3 years from 2002 to 2011. We used factor analysis to identify multimorbidity patterns from 31 self-reported chronic conditions among women aged 76-81 in 2002. We applied a linear increments model to account for attrition and related the multimorbidity patterns to functional ability and decline at subsequent surveys, as measured by activities of daily living (ADL) and instrumental activities of daily living (IADL). For each pattern, we determined mean ADL and IADL scores in the middle and highest third of factor score in comparison to a reference group.