Distress, multimorbidity, and complex multimorbidity among Chinese and Korean American older adults

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 19; no. 1; p. e0297035
• Main Authors: Oh, Hannah, Morey, Brittany N, Shi, Yuxi, Lee, Sunmin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 31.01.2024; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Adults; Aged; Aged patients; Analysis; Asian; Asian Americans; Asthma; Biology and Life Sciences; Cardiovascular disease; Cardiovascular diseases; Care and treatment; Chronic conditions; Chronic illnesses; Comorbidity; Complications and side effects; Coronary artery disease; Coronary heart disease; COVID-19; Cross-Sectional Studies; Diabetes; Diabetes mellitus; Diagnosis; Health insurance; Health insurance industry; Health problems; Heart diseases; Humans; Hypertension; Insurance; Measuring instruments; Medical research; Medicine and Health Sciences; Medicine, Experimental; Metabolic disorders; Middle Aged; Multimorbidity; Older people; Social Sciences; Socioeconomic factors; Socioeconomics; Stress (Psychology); Type 2 diabetes; South Korea; China; United States > US
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0297035

Studies suggest that distress is associated with various health conditions such as hypertension, asthma, diabetes, and coronary heart disease. However, only few studies focused on Asian Americans and little is known about the association with multiple comorbidity. We conducted a cross-sectional analysis among 400 Chinese and Korean American participants (aged 50-75 years) of the STOP CRC randomized controlled trial. Perceived distress was assessed using the distress thermometer scale (range 0-10). Disease diagnosis was self-reported by the participants. Multimorbidity (MM) was defined as having ≥2 chronic conditions. Complex multimorbidity (CMM) was defined as having ≥3 of the following body system disorders: circulation disorder, endocrine-metabolic disorder, cancer, anxiety or depression, breathing problem, and other health problems. We performed logistic regression for CMM and Poisson regression with robust error variance for MM to estimate associations with distress, adjusting for potential confounders. The mean age was 58.4 years and mean distress score was 3.65. One-unit increase in distress score was associated with a 1.22-fold increase in the odds of having CMM (95% CI: 1.04-1.42). The magnitude of association slightly increased after additional adjustment for socioeconomic factors and health insurance status (OR: 1.29; 95% CI: 1.10-1.52). Higher distress score was positively associated with MM but the association was only marginally significant (PR: 1.04; 95% CI: 0.99-1.10), adjusting for socioeconomic factors and health insurance status. Our data suggest that higher perceived distress may be associated with simultaneous dysfunction of multiple distinct body systems among Chinese and Korean American older adults.