Neurological conditions affected about 43% of all people on the globe in 2021 — beating out cardiovascular diseases as the top contributor to global disease burden, according to a new report.
The conditions include Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, stroke, neonatal encephalopathy (brain injury), migraine and diabetic neuropathy. Others include meningitis, epilepsy, autism spectrum disorder and nervous system cancers. Central and western sub-Saharan Africa had the highest burden, while high-income Asia Pacific and Australia had the lowest. In 2021, 3.4 billion people experienced a nervous system condition, according to authors of the Thursday report in The Lancet Neurology.
Globally, the overall amount of disability, illness and premature death — or disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) — from neurological conditions rose by 18% over the past 31 years. The report said the increase is largely due to an aging population. When the impact of demographics is removed through age-standardization, rates of DALYs and deaths from neurological conditions have actually fallen by about a third due to better awareness, prevention and vaccines, the authors said. Interventions targeting tetanus, meningitis and stroke were effective to help do that, the team wrote.
The most common neurological disorders in 2021 were tension headaches and migraines, while diabetic neuropathy was the fastest-growing of all neurological conditions.“Because many neurological conditions lack cures, and access to medical care is often limited, understanding modifiable risk factors and the potentially avoidable neurological condition burden is essential to help curb this global health crisis,” Katrin Seeher, a mental health specialist at the World Health Organization’s Brain Health Unit, said in a statement.
Authors of the report said that modifying 18 risk factors over a person’s lifetime — most importantly high systolic blood pressure — could prevent 84% of global DALYs from stroke. Controlling lead exposure could reduce the burden of intellectual disability by 63%, while reducing high fasting plasma glucose to normal levels could reduce the burden of dementia by around 15%, the authors said.
