Chronic disease clusters and health-related quality of life among individuals with musculoskeletal pain: a Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1966 study.

Abstract

Background: Musculoskeletal (MSK) pain is known to influence health-related quality of life (HRQoL), but the role of co-occurring chronic diseases in HRQoL in a MSK pain population has been less studied. This study aimed to evaluate (i) whether chronic disease clusters are related to HRQoL and (ii) whether these relationships differ in magnitude from those between the number of chronic diseases and HRQoL among people with MSK pain.

Material and methods: The Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1966 and its 46-year data collection point were used. The chronic disease clusters for individuals reporting any MSK pain within the past year were previously formulated using latent class analysis and consisted of: Psychiatric (co-existing mental health disorder, substance use disorder, and asthma), Metabolic (referring to the burden of metabolic diseases), and Relatively healthy. HRQoL was measured with a 15-dimension questionnaire. General linear regression model was used.

Results: Among 4490 participants, both the Psychiatric and Metabolic clusters associated with clinically significantly reduced HRQoL, when contrasted with the Relatively healthy cluster, but the association was stronger for the Psychiatric cluster. Similarly, the adjusted mean difference in HRQoL was higher for the Psychiatric cluster than for the multimorbidity (two or more diseases) category when compared with the reference categories (Relatively healthy cluster and no chronic diseases, respectively).

Conclusions: The present findings imply the clinical relevance of the previously identified chronic disease clusters and suggest that pure counts of chronic diseases may not be enough to describe the role of chronic diseases in HRQoL in MSK pain.