Article Text
Abstract
Objectives To provide the level and trends of prevalence, incidence and disability adjusted life years (DALYs) for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in 195 countries from 1990 to 2017 by age, sex, Socio-demographic Index (SDI; a composite of sociodemographic factors) and Healthcare Access and Quality (an indicator of health system performance) Index.
Methods Data from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors study (GBD) 2017 were used. GBD 2017 modelled the burden of RA for 195 countries from 1990 to 2017, through a systematic analysis of mortality and morbidity data to estimate prevalence, incidence and DALYs. All estimates were presented as counts and age-standardised rates per 100 000 population, with uncertainty intervals (UIs).
Results Globally, the age-standardised point prevalence and annual incidence rates of RA were 246.6 (95% UI 222.4 to 270.8) and 14.9 (95% UI 13.3 to 16.4) in 2017, which increased by 7.4% (95% UI 5.3 to 9.4) and 8.2% (95% UI 5.9 to 10.5) from 1990, respectively. However, the age-standardised rate of RA DALYs per 100 000 population was 43.3 (95% UI 33.0 to 54.5) in 2017, which was a 3.6% (95% UI −9.7 to 0.3) decrease from the 1990 rate. The age-standardised prevalence and DALY rates increased with age and were higher in females; the rates peaked at 70–74 and 75–79 age groups for females and males, respectively. A non-linear association was found between age-standardised DALY rate and SDI. The global age-standardised DALY rate decreased from 1990 to 2012 but then increased and reached higher than expected levels in the following 5 years to 2017. The UK had the highest age-standardised prevalence rate (471.8 (95% UI 428.9 to 514.9)) and age-standardised incidence rate (27.5 (95% UI 24.7 to 30.0)) in 2017. Canada, Paraguay and Guatemala showed the largest increases in age-standardised prevalence rates (54.7% (95% UI 49.2 to 59.7), 41.8% (95% UI 35.0 to 48.6) and 37.0% (95% UI 30.9 to 43.9), respectively) and age-standardised incidence rates (48.2% (95% UI 41.5 to 55.1), 43.6% (95% UI 36.6 to 50.7) and 36.8% (95% UI 30.4 to 44.3), respectively) between 1990 and 2017.
Conclusions RA is a major global public health challenge. The age-standardised prevalence and incidence rates are increasing, especially in countries such as Canada, Paraguay and Guatemala. Early identification and treatment of RA is vital especially among females, in order to reduce the ongoing burden of this condition. The quality of health data needs to be improved for better monitoring of disease burden.
- rheumatoid arthritis
- epidemiology
- health services research
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Footnotes
Handling editor Josef S Smolen
Correction notice This article has been corrected since it published Online First. The first and tenth affiliations have been updated.
Contributors SS, AAK, LM and MC designed the study. SS, AAK, MAM, AA-H, AA-A and MQ analysed the data and performed the statistical analyses. SS, AAK, DB and MC drafted the initial manuscript. All authors reviewed the drafted manuscript for critical content. All authors approved the final version of the manuscript.
Funding The GBD study is funded by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, however these were not involved in any way in the preparation of this manuscript. The present report was also supported by Social Determinants of Health Research Center, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical sciences, Tehran, Iran (No. 19406).
Disclaimer This study is based on publicly available data and solely reflects the opinion of its authors and not that of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
Competing interests None declared.
Patient consent for publication Not required.
Ethics approval This study was approved by Ethics Committee of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran (IR.SBMU.RETECH.REC.1398.161).
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Data availability statement Data are available in a public, open access repository.