Many major causes of disability in the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study present with a range of severity, and for most causes finding population distributions of severity can be difficult due to issues of sparse data, inconsistent measurement, and need to account for comorbidities. We developed an indirect approach to obtain severity distributions empirically from survey data.
Vitamin D deficiency has been correlated with several diseases and injuries including diabetes, osteoporosis, fractures, and falls. In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), current data on vitamin D status are lacking. To inform Saudi public health authorities on the current status of blood levels vitamin D deficiency, we analyzed data from the Saudi Health Interview Survey.
We conducted a large national survey in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 2013. We report on the health status of Saudi women and their health challenges.
Recent evidence suggests that stroke is increasing as a cause of morbidity and mortality in younger adults, where it carries particular significance for working individuals. Accurate and up-to-date estimates of stroke burden are important for planning stroke prevention and management in younger adults. This study aims to estimate prevalence, mortality, and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) and their trends for total, ischemic stroke (IS), and hemorrhagic stroke (HS) in the world for 1990–2013 in adults aged 20–64 years.
Global stroke epidemiology is changing rapidly. Although age-standardized rates of stroke mortality have decreased worldwide in the past two decades, the absolute numbers of people who have a stroke every year, and live with the consequences of stroke or die from their stroke, are increasing. Regular updates on the current level of stroke burden are important for advancing our knowledge on stroke epidemiology and facilitating organization and planning of evidence-based stroke care.
World mapping is an important tool to visualize stroke burden and its trends in various regions and countries. Geographic patterns are shown of incidence, prevalence, mortality, disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) and years lived with disability (YLDs) and their trends for ischemic stroke and hemorrhagic stroke in the world for 1990–2013.
Accurate information on stroke burden in men and women is important for evidence-based healthcare planning and resource allocation. Previously, limited research suggested that the absolute number of deaths from stroke in women was greater than in men, but the incidence and mortality rates were greater in men. However, sex differences in various metrics of stroke burden on a global scale have not been a subject of comprehensive and comparable assessment for most regions of the world, nor have sex differences in stroke burden been examined for trends over time.
Recent outbreaks of measles in the Americas have received news and popular attention, noting the importance of vaccination to population health. To estimate the potential increase in immunization coverage and reduction in days at risk if every opportunity to vaccinate a child was used, we analyzed vaccination histories of children 11–59 months of age from large household surveys in Mesoamerica.
There is a global commitment to reduce premature cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) 25% by 2025. The purpose of the present report is to (1) describe global trends and regional variation in premature mortality attributable to CVD, (2) review past and current approaches to the measurement of these trends, and (3) describe the limitations of existing models of epidemiological transitions for explaining the observed distribution and trends of CVD mortality.
Understanding the determinants of timely antiretroviral therapy (ART) initiation is useful for HIV programs intent on developing models of care that reduce delays in treatment initiation while maintaining a high quality of care. We analyzed patient- and facility-level determinants of time to ART initiation among patients who initiated ART in Kenya.
Following the methods of the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013 (GBD 2013), we have systematically analyzed all available demographic and epidemiological data sources for China at the provincial level. We assessed levels of and trends in all-cause mortality, causes of death, and years of life lost (YLL) in all 33 province-level administrative units in mainland China, all of which we refer to as provinces, for the years between 1990 and 2013.
In the past two decades, the under-5 mortality rate in China has fallen substantially, but progress with regard to the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 4 at the subnational level has not been quantified. We aimed to estimate under-5 mortality rates in mainland China for the years 1970 to 2012.
Chronic diseases and their risk factors are believed to be common in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). Most of them require long-term management through medications. We examined patterns of medication use for chronic health conditions (CHC) in KSA based on a national survey.
The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study assesses health losses from diseases, injuries, and risk factors using disability-adjusted life-years, which need a set of disability weights to quantify health levels associated with nonfatal outcomes. The objective of this study was to estimate disability weights for the GBD 2013 study.
The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study is a longstanding effort to report consistent and comprehensive measures of disease burden for the world. In this paper, we describe the methods used to estimate the global burden of stroke for the GBD 2013 study. Pathologic subtypes of stroke are modeled separately for two mutually exclusive and exhaustive categories: (1) ischemic stroke and (2) hemorrhagic and other non-ischemic strokes. Acute and chronic strokes are estimated separately. The GBD 2013 study has incorporated large amounts of new data on stroke death rates, incidence, and case fatality. Disease modeling methods have been updated to better integrate mortality and incidence data. Future efforts will focus on incorporating data on the regional variation in severity of disability. Stroke remains a new area for disease modeling. A better understanding of stroke incidence, mortality, and severity, and how it varies among countries, can help guide priority setting and improve health policy related to this important condition.
Mortality for children with congenital heart disease (CHD) has declined with improved surgical techniques and neonatal screening; however, as these patients live longer, accurate estimates of the prevalence of adults with CHD are lacking.
Verbal autopsy is gaining increasing acceptance as a method for determining the underlying cause of death when the cause of death given on death certificates is unavailable or unreliable, and there are now a number of alternative approaches for mapping from verbal autopsy interviews to the underlying cause of death. For public health applications, the population-level aggregates of the underlying causes are of primary interest, expressed as the cause-specific mortality fractions (CSMFs) for a mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive cause list. Although it allows for relative comparisons of alternative methods, CSMF Accuracy provides misleading numbers in absolute terms, because even random allocation of underlying causes yields relatively high CSMF accuracy. Therefore, the objective of this study was to develop and test a measure of CSMF that corrects this problem.
Modifiable risks account for a large fraction of disease and death, but clinicians and patients lack tools to identify high-risk populations or compare the possible benefit of different interventions.
United Nations member states have agreed to reduce premature cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality 25% by 2025. Global CVD risk factor targets have been recommended. We produced estimates to show how selected risk factor reduction would affect CVD mortality for different regions and countries.
We use the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013 data on mortality and causes of death, and disease and injury incidence and prevalence to analyze the burden of disease and injury in England as a whole, in English regions, and within each English region by deprivation quintile. We also assess disease and injury burden in England attributable to potentially preventable risk factors. England and the English regions are compared with the remaining constituent countries of the UK and with comparable countries in the European Union (EU) and beyond.
The Global Burden of Disease, Injuries, and Risk Factor study 2013 (GBD 2013) is the first of a series of annual updates of the GBD. Risk factor quantification, particularly of modifiable risk factors, can help to identify emerging threats to population health and opportunities for prevention. The GBD 2013 provides a timely opportunity to update the comparative risk assessment with new data for exposure, relative risks, and evidence on the appropriate counterfactual risk distribution.
Nigeria has made notable gains in improving childhood survival but the country still accounts for a large portion of the world’s overall disease burden, particularly among women and children. To date, no systematic analyses have comprehensively assessed trends for health outcomes and interventions across states in Nigeria.
Since the year 2000, a concerted campaign against malaria has led to unprecedented levels of intervention coverage across sub-Saharan Africa. Understanding the effect of this control effort is vital to inform future control planning.
The amount of international aid given to address non-communicable diseases is minimal. Most of it is directed to wealthier countries and focuses on the prevention of unhealthy lifestyles. Explanations for the current direction of non-communicable disease aid include that these are diseases of affluence that benefit from substantial research and development into their treatment in high-income countries and are better addressed through domestic tax and policy measures to reduce risk factor prevalence than through aid programs. This study assessed these justifications.
The Global Burden of Disease Study 2013 (GBD 2013) aims to bring together all available epidemiological data using a coherent measurement framework, standardized estimation methods, and transparent data sources to enable comparisons of health loss over time and across causes, age–sex groups, and countries. The GBD can be used to generate summary measures such as disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) and healthy life expectancy (HALE) that make possible comparative assessments of broad epidemiological patterns across countries and time. These summary measures can also be used to quantify the component of variation in epidemiology that is related to socio-demographic development.
