title: Comorbidity Analysis According to Sex and Age in Hypertension Patients in China.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Hypertension, an important risk factor for the health of human being, is often accompanied by various comorbidities. However, the incidence patterns of those comorbidities have not been widely studied.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  Applying big-data techniques on a large collection of electronic medical records, we investigated sex-specific and age-specific detection rates of some important comorbidities of hypertension, and sketched their relationships to reveal the risk for hypertension patients.
  
  
  METHODS
  We collected a total of 6,371,963 hypertension-related medical records from 106 hospitals in 72 cities throughout China. Those records were reported to a National Center for Disease Control in China between 2011 and 2013. Based on the comprehensive and geographically distributed data set, we identified the top 20 comorbidities of hypertension, and disclosed the sex-specific and age-specific patterns of those comorbidities. A comorbidities network was constructed based on the frequency of co-occurrence relationships among those comorbidities.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The top four comorbidities of hypertension were coronary heart disease, diabetes, hyperlipemia, and arteriosclerosis, whose detection rates were 21.71% (21.49% for men vs 21.95% for women), 16.00% (16.24% vs 15.74%), 13.81% (13.86% vs 13.76%), and 12.66% (12.25% vs 13.08%), respectively. The age-specific detection rates of comorbidities showed five unique patterns and also indicated that nephropathy, uremia, and anemia were significant risks for patients under 39 years of age. On the other hand, coronary heart disease, diabetes, arteriosclerosis, hyperlipemia, and cerebral infarction were more likely to occur in older patients. The comorbidity network that we constructed indicated that the top 20 comorbidities of hypertension had strong co-occurrence correlations.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Hypertension patients can be aware of their risks of comorbidities based on our sex-specific results, age-specific patterns, and the comorbidity network. Our findings provide useful insights into the comorbidity prevention, risk assessment, and early warning for hypertension patients.
authors.affiliation: 1. The State Key Laboratory of Management and Control for Complex Systems, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China;
authors.forename: Jiaqi
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: 3. College of Business, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, CO, USA.
authors.forename: James
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ma
authors.affiliation: 1. The State Key Laboratory of Management and Control for Complex Systems, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China;
authors.forename: Jiaojiao
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: 1. The State Key Laboratory of Management and Control for Complex Systems, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China;
authors.forename: Daniel Dajun
authors.initials: DD
authors.lastname: Zeng
authors.affiliation: 4. Institute of Disease Control and Prevention, Academy of Military Medical Sciences, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Hongbin
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Song
authors.affiliation: 4. Institute of Disease Control and Prevention, Academy of Military Medical Sciences, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Ligui
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: 1. The State Key Laboratory of Management and Control for Complex Systems, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China;; 2. Cloud Computing Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dongguan, China.
authors.forename: Zhidong
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Cao
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D002648:Child; D002681:China / Q000453:epidemiology; D015897:Comorbidity; D003327:Coronary Disease / Q000453:epidemiology; D003920:Diabetes Mellitus / Q000453:epidemiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D006973:Hypertension / Q000453:epidemiology*; D007674:Kidney Diseases / Q000453:epidemiology; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012307:Risk Factors; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Comorbidity; Detection Rate; Electronic Medical Records; Hypertension; Network Analysis.