A new study pinpointed which chronic conditions in people with multimorbidity — or multiple long-term conditions — are most closely associated with experiencing a fall.
The report was published Wednesday in BMC Geriatrics.
Researchers used data from 4,579 older adults living in China. They evaluated falls in association with 10 chronic conditions: hypertension, diabetes, hyperlipidemia, depression, obesity, heart disease, headache, cognitive dysfunction, stroke and visual impairment.
Of all participants, 8% had fallen and 2% fell frequently. Multimorbidity affected 54.7% of the participants, who were all aged 60 and up. Those who had a fall lived with a higher number of chronic diseases compared with those who didn’t fall.
Older adults with multimorbidity were 1.3 times more likely to fall. The proportion of women who fell was higher than that of men. Those who lived with a partner, as well as smokers and drinkers, had a lower risk for falls. (Previous research had suggested smokers and drinkers have a higher risk, the authors noted.)
People who experienced a fall had a higher prevalence of stroke, heart disease, headache, depression, and vision problems.
The team looked at three patterns of multimorbidity: cardiovascular-metabolic diseases, psycho-cognitive diseases and organic diseases. The psycho-cognitive disease pattern (cognitive dysfunction and depression) and organic disease pattern (stroke, heart disease, headache and visual impairment) were significantly associated with falls, data showed. People with psycho-cognitive diseases had the highest risk for falls over organic diseases, the data showed. Cardiovascular-metabolic diseases included hypertension, diabetes, hyperlipidemia, and obesity.
The authors pointed out that some interventions for cardiovascular diseases, like statins, could reduce the risk of falls but some research shows that obese older adults prefer to reduce their daily activities to rest due to fear of falling.
“More attention should be paid to the combination of specific diseases in the heath management among older adults, especially the psycho-cognitive diseases,” the authors wrote.
