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High or rising illness burden linked to disability in China

Compared with stable low burden, disability odds were 1.75 times as high with persistently high burden and 1.88 times as high with rapidly rising burden.

Paper by Fei Cao, Yunhao Jiang, Chen Chen · Baotou Central Hospital
Figure 1. Enrollment of the study population
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Figure 1. Enrollment of the study populationEnrollment of the study populationCao# et al.
Preprint: cohort study of 4,823 community-dwelling adults in China, against participants with stable low burdenPopulations

13,008 participants

Limit: Disability could worsen depressive symptoms while illness trajectories were still being measured

Edited by Boris Djordjevic · AgingResearch.News

Paper
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An observational cohort study of 13,008 middle-aged and older Chinese adults used four survey waves from 2011 to 2018. The preprint scored participants from 0 to 3 based on depressive symptoms, chronic lung diseases, and heart and blood vessel diseases.

Researchers identified three patterns: stable low burden (81.2%), persistently high burden (12.6%) and rapidly increasing burden (6.2%). After accounting for other factors, both persistently high and rapidly increasing burden were associated with higher odds of new disability affecting everyday activities. Only rapidly increasing burden was associated with lower memory scores in 2018. The persistently high group had no statistically clear independent association with memory scores.

Why it matters

The study addresses whether tracking coexisting conditions over time could help identify older adults at risk of losing independence or memory. The researchers recommended monitoring changes rather than relying only on a one-time disease count.

Caveats

This observational study cannot establish that these illness patterns caused disability or lower memory scores. The findings concern middle-aged and older adults in China, and the preprint has not been peer-reviewed.

From the paper

Participants

Data were derived from four waves of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) conducted between 2011 and 2018, and a total of 13,008 participants were included.

Methods

Result

In the fully adjusted model, compared with the stable low burden group, the persistent high burden group (OR = 1.75, 95% CI: 1.38–2.22) and rapidly increasing burden group (OR = 1.88, 95% CI: 1.37–2.54) were strong predictors of incident ADL disability.

Results

Quoted word for word from the full text on researchsquare.com.

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