Examining multimorbidity and polypharmacy among adults and older adults

After multiple re-applications to the CIHR Project Grant, the team received funding from the CIHR Priority Announcement in Aging and was able to complete a systematic review and cross-sectional study using two national data sources. The systematic review included 87 studies and the prevalence of multimorbidity ranged from 4.8% to 93.1%, while the prevalence of polypharmacy ranged from 2.6% to 86.6%.  Using the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA) and the Canadian Primary Care Sentinel Surveillance Network (CPCSSN) datasets, the team used consistent methodology to examine the prevalence and occurrence of multimorbidity and polypharmacy among those aged 45 to 85 years as of 2015.  When multimorbidity was defined as two or more conditions, the prevalence was 66.7% and 52% in the CLSA and CPCSSN cohorts, respectively.  The prevalence of polypharmacy was 14.9% in the CLSA cohort and 22.6% in the CPCSSN cohort when defined as five or more medications.  Using the same cut-points, the co-occurrence of multimorbidity and polypharmacy was similar between the two cohorts (CLSA: 14.3%; CPCSSN: 13.5%).  Almost 10% of middle-aged adults (45 to 64 years) living with this co-occurrence (CLSA: 9.2%; CPCSSN: 9.9%), as compared to approximately 20% of older adults (65 to 85 years) were living with both multimorbidity and polypharmacy (CLSA: 21.4%; CPCSSN: 18.3%). The team hope to further this research by conducting a similar analysis with more recent data in the CLSA and CPCSSN.