Hello! Rachel and I (Dylan) are 3rd year medical students who over the last 5 weeks have been updating the multimorbidity literature database for the six months between July 2023 to December 2023, as well as creating a report on a chosen subtopic as part of our student selected component (SSC).

The categories we chose for the database are as follows:

  1. Epidemiology of multimorbidity and its outcomes (inc. health economics)
  2. Epidemiology of multimorbidity prediction and associations with multimorbidity
  3. Polypharmacy
  4. Management of multimorbidity
  5. Qualitative work – experience and perspectives
  6. Multimorbidity policy and editorials

For this iteration of the database we tweaked the “Interventions for multimorbidity” heading to “Management of multimorbidity” to more accurately reflect the common types of papers released during the review period.

I (Dylan) found the papers discussing the association between sleep health and multimorbidity very interesting as it was a relationship that Ive not had a chance to consider before. There were 6 papers on PubMed which specifically focused on this link – reviewing previously literature, covering interventions and monitoring how poor sleep progresses multimorbidity.  The study by Zhou et al. tracked middle aged individual's sleep habits (quality and length) and measured new reports of chronic health conditions in the study population over the course of the study. It found that both poor sleep quality and length increased the risk of multimorbidity progression, both as individual and combined factors. I did not consider sleeps bidirectional and complex relationship with multimorbidity, and how something as normal as sleep could have such big implications for patient health.

I (Rachel) found a special interest in the papers which focused on the correlation between physical activity and multimorbidity. I found this extremely interesting as upon researching the topic and reading the papers we have included which are related to this, I discovered it to be one of the main ways we as a country can reduce the prevalence of multimorbidity as a whole. There were six papers overall which included the subject ‘physical activity and multimorbidity and from these I focused mainly on the paper by Fessler, L, ‘physical activity matters for everyone’s health, but individuals with multimorbidity benefit more’. There was a positive correlation between a decrease in physical activity and an increase in the prevalence of multimorbidity. Using this knowledge we can further research the correlation and focus on measures in order to initially prevent multimorbidity from arising, decreasing health care expenditure and improving generational health as a whole.

The full results of this seach may be found here Multimorbidity Publications July to Dec 2023. 

 

First published: 21 June 2024

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