Subjects’ characteristics.

<p>Subjects’ characteristics.</p

Number of comorbidities per individual by age brackets and total mortality.

<p>Each band represent the number of comorbidities/patient, and the width the proportion of individuals with that number of comorbidities at different age brackets (x-axis). Panel A represent those patients carrying the diagnosis of COPD and Panel B those without COPD. The stacked “Grim Reaper” represents the number of death at 3 years of follow-up (5,247 for COPD and 2,911 in the non-COPD) and their position is located at the mean age of death; one full “Grim Reaper” represents 1,000 deaths.</p

Prevalence comparison of those diseases mostly occurring in elders.

<p>Prevalence comparison of those diseases mostly occurring in elders.</p

Prevalence of co-morbidities commonly seen in the elderly between COPD and non-COPD patients at five different age categories.

<p>Solid dots ● represent COPD patients and hollow dots ○ represent non-COPD patients. The size of the dots is proportional to the number of links (degrees) in their respective networks. Note, the prevalence (vertical axis) is higher in the COPD group and reach those values seen in non-COPD at an earlier age (horizontal axis). Comorbidities where the prevalence in COPD is similar to controls 10–20 years earlier are highlighted with a solid arrow ↓ and hollow arrow ⇓ in non-COPD. We show in this <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0193143#pone.0193143.g002" target="_blank">Fig 2</a> representative examples of comorbidities of the elder (osteoporosis and atherosclerosis). For the complete list of comorbidities seen in the elders please refer to <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0193143#pone.0193143.s009" target="_blank">S9 Fig</a>.</p