Increased health burden for older people

Elderly people are developing more chronic conditions than ever before, according to a new UK analysis.

The study, by Professor Kamlesh Khunti and colleagues at Leicester University, UK, followed more than 15,000 people aged over 50 in England over ten years.

This showed that the percentage of older people with multiple conditions, including type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and arthritis, increased from 31.7% in 2002/03 to 43.1% in 2012/13. The percentage of older people without any chronic conditions fell over the same period from 33.9% to 26.8%.

Full details were published recently in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity.

The authors explain that this rise in the number of older people in England living with more than one chronic condition is putting increasing pressure on the NHS.

"The prevalence of multimorbidity, where people have more than one chronic condition, in older adults is steadily increasing over time," said Professor Khunti.

"The current models of care globally are based on the management of individual chronic conditions. However, given the increase in multimorbidity over the past ten years and the complex needs of these patients, clinical guidelines need to address the challenges in management of multimorbidity and formulate best practices to guide clinical decision making for these patients."

Co-author Dr Nafeesa Dhalwani added: "Multimorbidity has become one of the main challenges in the recent years for patients, health care providers and the health care systems globally. "Literature describing the burden of multimorbidity in the elderly population, especially trends over longer periods is very limited. This was an observational study so it can tell us about the trends, but it cannot tell us about the causes of multimorbidity."

Nafeesa, N. et al. Long terms trends of multimorbidity and association with physical activity in older English population. International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity 19 January 2016 ;doi: 10.1186/s12966-016-0330-9