Disability, Pain, and Everyday Functioning: Profiles of Life-limiting Conditions among Older Adults in Rural India

Chronic pain and mobility limitations are common in later life and frequently contribute to functional disability. However, disability assessment often focuses primarily on biomedical impairments, potentially overlooking broader dimensions of functional burden experienced by older adults. The study aimed to describe the prevalence of functional disability and physical burden, identify subgroups of older adults with shared patterns of functional limitation, and examine demographic factors associated with these profiles in rural Tamil Nadu, India. A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 521 adults aged ≥ 55 years across five rural villages in Tamil Nadu, India. Functional disability was measured using the Washington Group-Short Set (WG-SS), and physical burden was assessed using the EQ-5D-5L domains of mobility, self-care, and pain/discomfort. Latent class analysis (LCA) was used to identify patterns of functional limitation, followed by multinomial logistic regression to examine demographic predictors of class membership. Functional difficulty was highly prevalent, with 94.4