Evidence on socioeconomic inequalities in the prevalence of common long-term conditions and their variation across the life course is necessary for equitable service design and resource allocation. We used routinely collected electronic primary care records and a unified data extraction and analysis framework to estimate socioeconomic variations in the prevalence of 17 common long-term conditions by age and sex.
Electronic records for 2.2 m patients registered with 300 randomly selected primary care practices contributing to the Clinical Practice Research Datalink Aurum database were used to estimate observed, age-sex standardised and age-specific rates of disease prevalence on 31 March 2020 by Index of Multiple Deprivation quintile groups. Inequality in disease burden was expressed as the prevalence rate ratio (RR) between the most and least deprived fifths of the population.
Age-sex standardised prevalence rates were higher in the most deprived compared with the least deprived fifth of the population for 16 of 17 conditions. The largest relative differences in disease prevalence were observed for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (RR: 3.29; 95% CI: 3.19 to 3.38), severe mental illness (RR: 2.72; 95% CI: 2.60 to 2.85) and peripheral arterial disease (RR: 2.58; 95% CI: 2.46 to 2.72). For most conditions, the equity gap was largest in middle age and reduced with age thereafter.
Substantial socioeconomic inequalities in disease prevalence are evident in the English population. A catalogue of disease prevalence by socioeconomic quintile group, age and sex is provided to facilitate further analysis and modelling.