Introduction:

Multimorbidity consists of presenting more than one chronic disease simultaneously, a phenomenon favored by cumulative exposure to risk factors.

Methods:

Observational, descriptive, cross-sectional study and an explanatory binary logistic regression model. We analyzed 4 248 records of adults over 60 years of age, from a secondary source, with self-report of 17 health problems.

Results:

The age ranged between 60 and 112 years, 51.5% were between 60 and 69 years old, 72.8% were women, 57.8% had primary schooling and 15% had no schooling. Self-report was found from zero to 11 diseases, with arterial hypertension being the most frequent (53.5%), which together with diabetes (7.0%), bone (4.4%) and cardiac problems (4.2%) constituted the main combinations. 83.5% had nutritional risk and 18.4% risk of functional dependence. The prevalence of self-reported multimorbidity was 54.8% (CI 95% 54.7-54.9). The main associated factors corresponded to older age (Odds ratio -OR- 1.70 IC95% 1.32-2.21), female sex (OR = 1.53 IC95% 1.30-1.82), risk of dependence functional (OR = 1.35 IC95% 1.02-1.80) and nutritional risk (OR = 2.34 IC95% 1.82-3.02).

Conclusions:

The prevalence of multimorbidity in Antioquia is high, with hypertension being its main contributor and is strongly related to the risk of functional dependence and nutritional risk.

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