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Abstract
The aim of this study was to evaluate several sociodemographic, lifestyle, and clinical characteristics of the IKARIA study participants and to find healthy aging trajectories of multimorbidity of Ikarian islanders. During 2009, 1410 people (aged 30+) from Ikaria Island, Greece, were voluntarily enrolled in the IKARIA study. Multimorbidity was defined as the combination of at least two of the following chronic diseases: hypertension; hypercholesterolemia; diabetes; obesity; cancer; CVD; osteoporosis; thyroid, renal, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. A healthy aging index (HAI) ranging from 0 to 100 was constructed using 4 attributes, i.e., depression symptomatology, cognitive function, mobility, and socializing. The prevalence of multimorbidity was 51% among men and 65.5% among women, while the average number of comorbidities was 1.7 ± 1.4 for men and 2.2 ± 1.4 for women. The most prevalent chronic diseases among men with multimorbidity were hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, and obesity while among women they were hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, and thyroid disease. Multimorbidity was correlated with HAI (Spearman’s rho = −0.127, p < 0.001) and for every 10-unit increase in HAI, participants had 20% lower odds of being multimorbid. Multimorbidity in relation to HAI revealed a different trend across aging among men and women, coinciding only in the seventh decade of life. Aging is usually accompanied by chronic diseases, but multimorbidity seems to also be common among younger adults. However, healthy aging is a lifelong process that may lead to limited co-morbidities across the lifespan.
Highlights
IntroductionThe world’s older population is intensely growing [1]
Our results show that Ikarians have a high mean healthy aging score independent of multimorbidity status, and when compared to other Greek islanders, this was found to be proportionally very high [27]
As supported by the evidence of the present work, despite the prevalence of multimorbidity, Ikarians have a satisfactory healthy aging level, while hypertension and hypercholesterolemia are the dominant morbidities in both men and women
Summary
The world’s older population is intensely growing [1]. This aging population is mostly a result of two demographic effects: longevity increase and fertility decline. An increment in life span raises the average age of the population by increasing the numbers of surviving older people [2]. In most of the cases, it is not known whether these old populations are living their extra years in good or poor health; it is almost twenty years since the World Health Organization published statistics called the Healthy Life Expectancy (HALE), defined as the average number of years that a person can expect to live in “full health”, excluding the years lived in less than full health due to disease and/or injury [4]
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