Sex-Specific Multimorbidity–Multibehaviour Patterns in Primary Care Populations

Background: A conceptual shift in healthcare emphasises multimorbidity and multi-behaviours as interconnected phenomena, highlighting dose–response associations and sex-specific differences. Data-driven approaches have been suggested for over-coming methodological challenges, of multimorbidity research. By using exploratory factor analysis, this study aimed to identify sex-specific lifestyle-associative multimor-bidity patterns, providing valuable evidence to primary care providers and informing future multimorbidity guidelines. Methods: A retrospective observational study ex-amined the electronic health records of three general practices in the UK between 2015 and 2018. The participants were aged 18+ with lifestyle multimorbidity, having en-gaged with multiple health risk behaviours. Stratified exploratory factor analysis with oblique rotation was used to identify sex-specific lifestyle-associative multimorbidity patterns. Results: The study included N = 7560 patients, with females comprising 53.9%. Eight independent lifestyle-associative multimorbidity patterns were identified and distributed as follows. For females, three patterns emerged: cardiometabolic–neurovascular spectrum disorders (42.97% variance), respiratory conditions (8.08%), and sensory impairment (5.63%), with 25.4% assigned to these patterns. For males, five patterns were revealed: cardiometabolic–vascular spectrum disorders (34.10%), geni-tourinary (9.19%), respiratory–vision (8.20%), ocular (5.70%), and neurovascular–gastro–renal syndrome (4.54%), with 43%. Conclusions: We revealed eight different sex-specific lifestyle-associated patterns, implying the need for tailored clinical ap-proaches. The application of exploratory factor analysis yielded clinically valuable and scientifically rigorous multimorbidity patterns. Clinically, the findings advocate for a paradigm shift towards person-centred care, integrating multimorbidity and SNAP multibehaviours to enhance the complexity of inquiry and treatment of high-risk pop-ulations.