Neurological diseases overshadow heart disease, posing a global health threat

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An important new analysis published on Friday reveals that conditions that affect the nervous system, such as stroke, migraines and dementia, have surpassed heart disease as the biggest cause of illness worldwide. became.

The analysis showed that more than 3.4 billion people, representing 43% of the world’s population, will be affected by neurological diseases in 2021, significantly more than previously estimated.

The study was conducted by hundreds of researchers led by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), a US-based institute that serves as the global standard for health statistics.

The study’s lead author, Jamie Steinmetz from IHME, said the results show that neurological conditions are now “the leading global cause of overall disease burden”.

Cases of these conditions have surged 59% over the past 30 years, she said, and the main cause of that increase is the aging and rapid growth of the world’s population.

Researchers looked at how 37 different neurological conditions affected disease, disability and premature death in 204 countries and territories from 1990 to 2021.

This data was used to estimate how many healthy years of life are lost due to each disease, called disability-adjusted life years (DALYs).

In 2021, more than 443 million years of healthy life will be lost to neurological diseases worldwide, an 18% increase compared to 1990, a study has found.

However, adjusting for population age and growing size reduces DALYs and deaths from these conditions by about a third, the researchers said.

The worst condition by far is stroke, which is equivalent to 160 million years of healthy life lost.

Then came neonatal encephalopathy, migraines, dementia including Alzheimer’s disease, nerve damage from diabetes, meningitis, and a type of brain damage called epilepsy.

Cognitive impairment due to the new coronavirus infection ranked 20th.

growing very fast

More than 11 million people died from 37 neurological diseases in 2021, according to a study published in the Lancet Neurology journal.

However, the IHME announced last year that cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death, accounting for 19.8 million deaths worldwide in 2022.

The most common neurological disorders were tension headaches and migraines.

The fastest growing condition was nerve damage called diabetic neuropathy due to the rapidly increasing number of people with diabetes.

There is no cure for most of these symptoms.

But there are ways to reduce risk, including reducing high blood pressure, diabetes and alcohol consumption, the researchers said.

They called for more to be done to prevent, treat and rehabilitate the disease, which disproportionately affects poorer countries.

Study co-author Valerie Fagin warned: “Globally, the neurological burden is growing very rapidly and will put even greater pressure on health systems in the coming decades.” .

The ongoing Global Burden of Disease study series is the first to examine the impact of neurological diseases on children.

These diseases account for nearly one-fifth of all DALYs, meaning that in 2019 alone, children around the world lost 80 million years of healthy life to these diseases.