nutrients Article The Association of Healthy Aging with Multimorbidity: IKARIA Study Alexandra Foscolou 1,2, Christina Chrysohoou 1,* , Kyriakos Dimitriadis 1, Konstantina Masoura 1, Georgia Vogiatzi 1, Viktor Gkotzamanis 2, George Lazaros 1, Costas Tsioufis 1 and Christodoulos Stefanadis 1 1 First Cardiology Clinic, Hippokration Hospital, School of Medicine, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, 11527 Athens, Greece;
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[email protected]; Tel.: +30-213-208-8000 Abstract: The aim of this study was to evaluate several sociodemographic, lifestyle, and clinical characteristics of the IKARIA study participants and to find healthy aging trajectories of multimor- bidity of Ikarian islanders. During 2009, 1410 people (aged 30+) from Ikaria Island, Greece, were voluntarily enrolled in the IKARIA study. Multimorbidity was defined as the combination of at least two of the following chronic diseases: hypertension; hypercholesterolemia; diabetes; obesity; cancer; CVD; osteoporosis; thyroid, renal, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. A healthy aging index (HAI) ranging from 0 to 100 was constructed using 4 attributes, i.e., depression symptomatology, cognitive function, mobility, and socializing. The prevalence of multimorbidity was 51% among men and 65.5% among women, while the average number of comorbidities was 1.7 ± 1.4 for men Citation: Foscolou, A.; Chrysohoou, and 2.2 ± 1.4 for women.