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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Aging and Public Health
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1516215
This article is part of the Research Topic Metabolic Pathways to Multiple Long-term Conditions (Multimorbidity): Focusing on Cardio-metabolic Multimorbidity (CMM) View all 3 articles
Comorbidity patterns and implications for disease control: a disease networking analysis using medical records in Shanghai, China
Provisionally accepted- 1 Shanghai Health Development Research Center (Shanghai Medical Information Center), Shanghai, China
- 2 Shanghai Health Statistics Center, Shanghai, China
The aging problem is accelerating in Shanghai, leading to the development of chronic comorbidities in older adults. Studying the correlations within comorbidity patterns may help manage disease prevention as well as implicate early control.Objectives: This study was a cross-sectional study based on a large sample size of 3,779,756 lines of medical records. A network analysis and a community classification were conducted to illustrate disease networks and some internal relationships within comorbidity patterns among older adults in Shanghai.The Network analysis and community classification were performed using IsingFit function and Fast-greedy community function. Data set including disease codes and disease prevalence were collected from medical records.The top 5 prevalent diseases were hypertension (64.78%), chronic ischemic heart disease (39.06%), type 2 diabetes mellitus (24.97%), lipid metabolism disorders (21.79%), and gastritis (19.71%). The sampled population was susceptible to 11 comorbidities for hypertension, 9 for diabetes, 28 for ischemic heart disease, 26 for gastritis, and 2 for lipid metabolism disorders in male patients. Lipid metabolism disorders, gastritis, fatty liver, polyp of colon, osteoporosis, atherosclerosis, and heart failure had strong centrality.The most common patterns of comorbidity was dominated by ischemic heart disease and gastritis, followed by a ternary pattern between hypertension, diabetes, and lipid metabolism disorders. Male were more likely to comorbid with cardiovascular and sleep problems. Females were more likely to comorbid with thyroid disease, inflammatory diseases, and hyperuricaemia. It was suggested that healthcare professionals should focus on monitoring relevant vital signs and mental health according the specific comorbidity pattern for old adults with chronic diseases to prevent the development of new or more severe comorbidities.
Keywords: older adults, Aging, Chronic Disease, comorbidity network, Community classification, disease prevention
Received: 24 Oct 2024; Accepted: 26 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Shen, Tian, Li and Niu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Yuhong Niu, Shanghai Health Development Research Center (Shanghai Medical Information Center), Shanghai, China
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