Research

Hormonal

Higher baseline levels of Interleukin-6 (IL-6) and a steeper longitudinal increase in IL-6 levels are independently associated with an accelerated rate of developing multimorbidity (accumulation of chronic diseases) in older adults.

If you are over 60, monitoring inflammatory markers like IL-6 may help predict your risk of developing multiple chronic conditions. High or rising IL-6 levels are linked to a faster accumulation of diseases. This suggests that managing inflammation could be a key strategy to slow down the progression of multimorbidity in older adults.

GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
higher baseline IL-6 and steeper increase of IL-6 levels were significantly and independently associated with a steeper increase in multimorbidity over time (p < .001 and p = .003, respectively).
Elisa Fabbri et al. · The Journals of Gerontology Series A · 2014

Why this rating

Longitudinal study with 9-year follow-up and large sample size (n=1018), though observational design limits causal inference.

Source

Aging and the Burden of Multimorbidity: Associations With Inflammatory and Anabolic Hormonal Biomarkers

Elisa Fabbri et al. · The Journals of Gerontology Series A · 2014

DOI 10.1093/gerona/glu127

cohort · n=1018Cited 236×
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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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