Evaluating the risk of comorbidity onset in elderly patients after a cancer diagnosis

Cancer is a critical disease that affects a person physically, mentally, socially, and in many other aspects. During the treatment stage of cancer, patients suffer from various health complexities, especially elderly people, which might result in the onset of other diseases development of a comorbid condition. Several studies have shown comorbidity plays a crucial role in cancer survival. However, there remains a lack of comprehensive statistical techniques at the national level studies to assess the significance of comorbidities development in cancer. Our research aims to address this gap by comparing cancer and non-cancer individuals over four years' time period.

The Health Retirement Study (HRS) data was used to extract information from 6651 participants aged more than 50. Within a 4-year time span, cross-sectional observations were created whether comorbidities or not based on the development of diseases such as high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, lung disease, and psychological disease.

In the multivariable regression model, we observed higher chances of developing comorbidity (OR = 1.321, p-value 0.0051) among the cancer group compared to the non-cancer group, adjusting the socio-economic factors. Moreover, the socio-economic factors were found to be significantly associated with cancer leading to applying the propensity score matching with (1:3 matching). Finally, the balanced data also showed significantly higher chances of developing comorbidity (OR = 1.294, p-value 0.0207) among cancer patients.

The above findings demonstrated the imperative development of enhanced treatment protocols, which prioritize the overall health of cancer patients, thereby reducing their susceptibility to additional illnesses.