The Associations of Lifestyle Factors and Behaviors with Multimorbidity

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Background

Globally, the average life expectancy is increasing with more people living with multiple chronic conditions. Multimorbidity is commonly defined as the co-occurrence of two or more chronic conditions in an individual; this occurrence remains a major challenge for health systems due to its association with adverse health outcomes, including higher mortality rates, increased demands for healthcare services, functional disability, and lower quality of life. Previous studies have shown that a variety of lifestyle factors and health behaviors, such as smoking, physical activity, and nutrition, are associated with the development of multiple non-communicable conditions. For instance, a healthy diet is preventive of several diet-related non-communicable conditions and diseases, such as obesity, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes. Healthy diet may also be associated with multimorbidity and could potentially prevent the development of multimorbidity. However, the epidemiology of multimorbidity is poorly understood as most studies have focused on single-disease-related outcomes or excluded patients with comorbid diseases.

Better understanding of the various health-related lifestyle factors (e.g., stress, body mass index, sleep duration, quality of diet, and physical activity) and health-related behaviors (e.g., meal frequency, daily breakfast consumption, smoking, and alcohol consumption) associated with multimorbidity in a given population has important implications for prevention, diagnosis, and treatment strategies. Therefore, the goal of this Research Topic is to publish a collection of articles that examine the relationship between health-related lifestyle factors/behavior and multimorbidity. These findings will provide evidence to accelerate the discovery and development of new diagnostic tools, as well as tailored intervention strategies for the prevention and/or management of individuals living with multiple chronic diseases. In addition, these findings will contribute to the development and evaluation of interventions and treatment strategies. For example, interventions aimed at increasing physical activity and/or improving diet in individuals with multimorbidity, whilst taking into account the impact of self-management behaviours such as medication adherence and smoking cessation.

This Research Topic aims to increase the knowledge and understanding of the relationship between various health-related lifestyle factors and multimorbidity; thereby assisting in the development of evidence-based tailored or individualized strategies for multimorbidity prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. The Research Topic provides an opportunity to publish high-quality research investigating health-related lifestyle factors and behaviors in both the elderly and non-elderly in relation to the development or progression of multimorbidity. The aim is to collect and connect the most recent research findings in order to provide a comprehensive overview of this important topic. This Research Topic welcomes submissions of original articles that may utilize quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-methods approaches, systematic reviews and meta-analyses, and brief research reports, relating to, but not limited to the following subtopics:

• Prevalence of multimorbidity and different patterns of multimorbidity;
• Dietary patterns and habits and multimorbidity;
• Dietary practices and multimorbidity;
• Quality of diet and multimorbidity;
• Health-related behaviors (e.g., smoking, alcohol consumption etc.) and multimorbidity
• Diet Composition (macronutrients, micronutrients, food categories) and multimorbidity;
• Physical activity and multimorbidity;
• Sleep duration and multimorbidity;
• Multimorbidity and psychological distress or mental diseases;
• Self-rated health and life satisfaction and multimorbidity.

Keywords: multimorbidity, chronic disease, physical activity, sedentary behavior, dietary factors, dietary habits, dietary pattern, diet quality, lifestyle factors, lifestyle behaviors, nutrition, comorbidity, epidemiology, public health

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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