The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors (GBD) Study provides information on the worldwide and country-specific distribution, trends and risk factors of all clinical conditions and injuries, based on the results of epidemiological studies integrated with a Bayesian meta-regression modeling tool. In this systematic analysis, the authors quantified the global disease burden due to neurological disorders during the period 1990-2015 and its relationship with each country's socio-economic level. The burden was measured using prevalence, mortality, disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs), years of life lost (YLLs), and years lived with disability (YLDs). In 2015, neurological disorders were the leading cause of DALYs (250·7 million, 10·2% of global DALYs) and the second-leading cause of deaths (9·4 million, 16·8% of global deaths). The most prevalent neurological disorders were tension-type headache, migraine, medication overuse headache, Alzheimer's disease and other dementias. During the study period, the worldwide burden of neurological disorders has increased significantly as a result of population growth and ageing, despite substantial decreases in mortality rates from stroke and communicable neurological disorders. Communicable neurological disorders and epilepsy were the largest cause of DALYs in countries with low sociodemographic index (a compound measure including income per capita, education and fertility). Neurodegenerative disorders such as dementias and Parkinson disease, most common in elderly people, are the main drivers of neurological disease burden. These findings can be extremely useful to health professionals and policy makers to implement health interventions to address the increasing of neurological interventions.
References
GBD 2015 Neurological Disorders Collaborator Group. Global, regional, and national burden of neurological disorders during 1990-2015: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2015. Lancet Neurol. 2017 Sep 15. pii: S1474-4422(17)30299-5. doi: 10.1016/S1474-4422(17)30299-5. [Epub ahead of print]