Prevalence and correlates of arthritis in Indian older adults: Findings from the longitudinal aging study of India

There are no estimates of arthritis in older adults from a nationally representative population in India and this is a major gap in evidence for effective policy making. Therefore, this study was planned to use secondary data available from the Longitudinal Aging Study of India (LASI) to estimate the prevalence of arthritis and study its risk factors in older adults from India. We used data from the first wave of LASI, a national and state-level study of aging and health in India. Weighted prevalence with 95% confidence intervals (CI) for Arthritis was estimated in different age groups. We built unadjusted and adjusted logistic regression models for identifying the risk factors associated with arthritis. We also evaluated the relationship between functional dependence and arthritis using a multivariable regression model. Overall, 9.36% of the Indian population aged 45 years or above had Arthritis. The prevalence was 7.49% and 11.03% in males and females respectively. Females are more at risk for arthritis as compared to males with an odds ratio of 1.59 (95% CI: 1.50, 1.69).  Age also was a significant risk factor with an adjusted odd ratio of 1.41 (95% CI: 1.31, 1.52)