Multimorbidity patterns in young adults in Catalonia: an analysis of clusters

Objective: The aim of this study was to identify multimorbidity patterns in patients from 19 to 44 years attended in primary care in Catalonia in 2010. Design: Cross-sectional study. Setting: 251 primary care centres. Participants: 530,798 people with multimorbidity, aged 19 to 44 years. Main outcome measures: Multimorbidity was defined as the coexistence of >= 2 more International Classification system (ICD-10) registered in the electronic health record. Multimorbidity patterns were identified using hierarchical cluster analysis and by sex and age group (19-24 and 25-44). Results: Of the 882,708 people from initial population, 530,798 (60.1%) accomplished multimorbidity criterion. Mean age was 33.0 years (SD: 7.0) and 53.3% were women. Multimorbidity was higher in the 25-to 44-years-old group with respect the younger group (60.5 vs. 58.1%, p < 0.001), being higher in women. Most prevalent cluster in all groups included, among others, by dental caries, smoking, dorsalgia, common cold and other anxiety disorders. For both sexes in the 25 to 44-years-old group appeared the cardiovascular-endocrine-metabolic pattern (obesity, lipid disorders and arterial hypertension). Conclusions: Multimorbidity affects more than half of persons between 19 to 44-years-old. The most prevalent cluster is formed by grouping common diseases (dental caries, common cold, smoking, anxiety disorders and dorsalgias). Another pattern to highlight is the cardiovascular endocrine-metabolic pattern in the 25- to 44 years-old group. Knowledge of patterns of multimorbidity in young adults could be used to design individualized preventive strategies. (C) 2015 Elsevier Espana, S.L.U. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).