Global, regional, and national time trends in the burden of epilepsy, 1990-2019: an age-period-cohort analysis for the global burden of disease 2019 study

Tao Shan; Yahui Zhu; Haozhi Fan; Zeye Liu; Jing Xie; Mao Li; Shenqi Jing

doi:10.3389/fneur.2024.1418926

Global, regional, and national time trends in the burden of epilepsy, 1990-2019: an age-period-cohort analysis for the global burden of disease 2019 study

Front Neurol. 2024 Aug 15:15:1418926. doi: 10.3389/fneur.2024.1418926. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Tao Shan^#^{1

2

3

4

5}, Yahui Zhu^#⁶, Haozhi Fan^#^{7

8}, Zeye Liu⁹, Jing Xie¹⁰, Mao Li¹¹, Shenqi Jing^{3

4

5

12

13}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Outpatient, The First Affiliated Hospital with Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, China.
² School of Information Management, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China.
³ Department of Medical Informatics, School of Biomedical Engineering and Informatics, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, China.
⁴ Institute of Medical Informatics and Management, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, China.
⁵ Jiangsu Province Engineering Research Center for Chronic Disease Big Data Application and Intelligent Health Service, Nanjing, China.
⁶ Department of Neurology, Beijing Tiantan Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China.
⁷ Jiangsu Institute of Clinical Medicine, The First Affiliated Hospital with Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, China.
⁸ School of Cyber Science and Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, China.
⁹ Department of Cardiac Surgery, Peking University People's Hospital, Peking University, Beijing, China.
¹⁰ Department of Pharmacy, Zhongda Hospital, School of Medicine, Southeast University, Nanjing, China.
¹¹ Department of Neurology, the First Medical Center, Chinese PLA General Hospital, Beijing, China.
¹² Center for Data Management, The First Affiliated Hospital with Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, China.
¹³ Department of Information Management, The First Affiliated Hospital with Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Background: Epilepsy is a non-communicable chronic brain disease that affects all age groups. There are approximately 50 million epilepsy patients worldwide, which is one of the most common neurological disorder. This study reports the time trends in the burden of epilepsy from 1999 to 2019.

Methods: We evaluated the disease burden and its temporal trends of epilepsy using the prevalence and years lived with disability (YLDs), which was estimated based on the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2019 study. The age-period-cohort (APC) model was used to estimate the temporal trends of the epilepsy prevalence and YLDs rates, and to analyze the relative risks of age, periods and queues (age/period/queue effects).

Results: In the past 30 years, the global age-standardized prevalence rate and age-standardized rate has increased by 29.61% and 27.02%, respectively. Globally, the APC model estimated the net drift of prevalence and YLDs were 0.88% (95% CI: 0.83-0.93) and 0.80% (95% CI: 0.75-0.85) per year. Among 204 countries and territories, the YLDs in 146 and prevalence 164 showed an increasing trend. And the risk of YLDs and prevalence increases with age, with the lowest risk among 0-4 years old and the highest risk among 75-79 years old. Unfavorable increasing period and cohort risks of YLDs and prevalence were observed.

Conclusion: Over the past 30 years, the YLDs and prevalence of epilepsy have gradually increased globally and unfavorable increasing period and cohort risks were observed. Emphasizing epilepsy prevention, strengthening epilepsy health education, optimizing older adults epilepsy diagnosis and treatment plans, and actively promoting epilepsy diagnosis and treatment plans can effectively reduce new cases of epilepsy and related disabilities.

Keywords: age-period-cohort; disease burden; epilepsy; prevalence; years lived with disability.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare that financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This research was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (nos. 2022YFB2703300 and 2022YFB2703301) and the Key R&D Program of Jiangsu (no. BE2022798).