The study aimed to measure the prevalence of multimorbidity among the elderly (≥ 60 years old) in China, and examine their associations with physical activity levels and disability.An exploratory factor analysis based on tetrachoric correlation matrix was used to extract multimorbidity patterns. Ordinal logistic regression or Poisson regression was used to determine the associations between multimorbidity pattern and physical activity levels and disability.Among 9 634 participants, the prevalence of multimorbidity (≥2) was 94.6%. 5 clusters of multimorbidity patterns: visceral disease pattern, respiratory pattern, heart brain and vessel disease/degenerative diseases pattern, psychiatric problems/joint pattern and metabolic disorder pattern were obtained.Higher factor scores of respiratory pattern, heart brain and vessel disease/degenerative diseases pattern and metabolic disorder pattern were significantly associated with lower levels of physical activity. The 5 patterns scores were significantly associated with the risk of disability.Multimorbidity was highly prevalent in the Chinese older people, and were high-risk factors of low physical activity level and disability. Interventions on multimorbidity problem in elderly are urgently needed.

older people；multimorbidity pattern；physical activity；disability