In a study published on July 9th in the open access journal PLOS Medicine, Daniel Stow, Ph.D., an epidemiologist at Queen Mary University of London, UK, and collaborators discovered factors that increase the risk of developing several, long-term, coexisting health conditions among South Asian populations in the United Kingdom. Since nearly 8 percent of the UK's population has South Asian heritage, these findings lend much needed insights for public health.
Most people will develop some long-term mental or physical health condition in their lifetime, and many will develop several. This co-occurrence is known as "multimorbidity," and the additive impacts of these conditions can greatly affect a person's quality of life. In the UK, people with South Asian heritage are particularly at risk for experiencing several chronic illnesses together, but no previous extensive research on the factors that contribute to this trend has been conducted.
The research team looked at two major categories of conditions: mental health and cardiometabolic disease, focusing on the most common iterations, such as anxiety and depression as well as hypertension, diabetes, and kidney disease. They followed a cohort of over 23,000 British Bangladeshi and British Pakistani volunteers who are part of the ongoing Genes & Health Study. These longitudinal data gave researchers secure access to both the patients' anonymized health records and their genetics.
From the anonymized health records alone, the researchers extracted several patterns. Women, younger people, those living in more socioeconomically deprived areas, and British Bangladeshi volunteers were more likely to experience multimorbidity. The order of conditions also seemed to matter. If someone developed a cardiometabolic condition before a mental health condition, they were more likely to experience a more serious health event, like a heart attack or kidney failure. Knowledge of these trends can be used to advise medical professionals to pursue earlier screenings and preventative care for patients who may be more at risk.
The authors add, "What struck us most was that the early onset of cardiometabolic and mental health conditions in British Bangladeshi and British Pakistani people is often the first step on a pathway towards multimorbidity. For some groups, this risk is particularly striking. A healthy 30-year-old Bangladeshi woman has around a 1 in 2 chance of developing a cardiometabolic or mental health condition by the age of 40, and a 1 in 8 chance of developing multimorbidity involving both.
"These findings suggest that we may be missing important opportunities for prevention and early diagnosis, and provide evidence to consider offering health checks (including the NHS Health Check) to people at higher risk in their 20s and 30s, rather than waiting until later in life."
In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper in PLOS Medicine: https://plos.io/4ooQt5e
Citation: Stow D, Tsang RSM, Katzourou IK, Huang Q, Samuel M, Wood ML, et al. (2026) Genetic and sociodemographic factors associated with trajectories of physical and mental health multimorbidity in a South Asian cohort in the UK: A multistate modelling analysis. PLoS Med 23(7): e1004844. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1004844
Author countries: United Kingdom
Funding: see manuscript
