The burden of Parkinson's disease in the Middle East and North Africa region, 1990-2019: results from the global burden of disease study 2019

Abstract

Background: Parkinson's disease (PD) remains a common disabling progressive neurodegenerative disorder. We aimed to report the prevalence, death and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) attributable to PD in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and its 21 countries by age, sex and socio-demographic index (SDI), between 1990 and 2019.

Methods: Publicly available data on the burden of PD in the MENA countries were retrieved from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2019 project. The results are presented with age-standardised numbers and rates per 100,000 population, along with their corresponding 95% uncertainty intervals (UIs).

Results: In 2019, PD had an age-standardised point prevalence of 82.6 per 100,000 population in MENA and an age-standardised death rate of 5.3, which have increased from 1990 to 2019 by 15.4% and 2.3%, respectively. In 2019, the age-standardised DALY rate of PD was 84.4, which was 0.9% higher than in 1990. The highest and lowest age-standardised DALY rates of PD in 2019 were found in Qatar and Kuwait, respectively. Also in 2019, the highest number of prevalent cases and number of DALYs were found in the 75-79 age group for both sexes. In 2019, females in MENA had an overall higher DALY rate. Furthermore, from 1990 to 2019 the burden of PD generally decreased with increasing socio-economic development, up to an SDI of around 0.4, and then increased with higher levels of SDI.

Conclusion: An upward trend was observed in the point prevalence of PD over the last three decades. This highlights the need to allocate more resources for research. Furthermore, properly equipped healthcare services are needed for the increasing number of patients with PD.

Keywords: Disability-adjusted life-years; Epidemiology; Middle East and North Africa; Mortality; Parkinson’s disease.

Fig. 1

Age-standardised point prevalence (A), deaths (B), and DALYs (C) for Parkinson’s disease (per 100,000 population) in the Middle East and North Africa region in 2019, by sex and country. DALY = disability-adjusted-life-years. (Generated from data available from http://ghdx.healthdata.org/gbd-results-tool)

Fig. 2

Number of prevalent cases and prevalence (A), number of deaths and death rate (B), and the number of DALYs and DALY rate (C) for Parkinson’s disease (per 100,000 population) in the Middle East and North Africa region, by age and sex in 2019; Dotted and dashed lines indicate 95% upper and lower uncertainty intervals, respectively. DALY = disability-adjusted-life-years. (Generated from data available from http://ghdx.healthdata.org/gbd-results-tool)

Fig. 3

Ratio of the Middle East and North Africa region to the global Parkinson’s disease DALY rate according to age group and sex, 1990–2019. DALY = disability-adjusted-life-years. (Generated from data available from http://ghdx.healthdata.org/gbd-results-tool)

Fig. 4

Age-standardised DALY rates of Parkinson’s disease for the 21 countries and territories in 2019, by SDI; Expected values based on the Socio-demographic Index and disease rates in all locations are showns as the black line. Each point shows the observed age-standardised DALY rate for each country in 2019. DALY = disability-adjusted-life-years. SDI = Socio-demographic Index (Generated from data available from http://ghdx.healthdata.org/gbd-results-tool)