Prevalence of Chronic Diseases in Middle-Aged Women

Background: During middle age, a lot of changes happen in all physical, mental, social, and family aspects of women that may greatly affect the development of diseases and mortality risk.

Objectives: This research was conducted to determine the extent of chronic diseases in middle-aged women visiting healthcare treatment centers in Ahvaz.

Materials and Methods: This was a descriptive research study carried on 1266 women of 45-64 years old who were selected using the multistage sampling method. The necessary information was collected through a self-designed questionnaire and analyzed using SPSS V21. Descriptive statistics, t test, and analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed at 95% level of confidence.

Results: Results showed that 46.8% of these women had one or more chronic diseases as follows: hypertension 12.5%, diabetes mellitus 7.5%, diabetes mellitus with heart diseases or high blood pressure 8.8%, heart diseases 5.8%, heart diseases together with high blood pressure 3.5%, and other diseases 8.7%. The effect of age, number of children, death of husband, occupation, ability to look after oneself, and do housework independently, degree of education, economic status (P < 0.001), age at marriage, and ethnicity (P = 0.001), on chronic diseases were significant.

Conclusions: Considering our results and high prevalence of chronic diseases, especially high blood pressure and diabetes mellitus, in middle-aged women, greater attention must be paid to the screening and monitoring programs of these chronic diseases.