A new relation between prevalence and incidence of a chronic disease

Abstract

In 1991 Keiding published a relation between the age-specific prevalence and incidence of a chronic disease (in Age-specific incidence and prevalence: a statistical perspective. J. Roy. Stat. Soc. A, 154, 371–412). For special cases alternative formulations by differential equations were given recently in Brinks et al. (2013, Deriving age-specific incidence from prevalence with an ordinary differential equation. Statist. Med., 32, 2070–2078) and in Brinks & Landwehr (2014, Age- and time-dependent model of the prevalence of non-communicable diseases and application to dementia in Germany, Theor. Popul. Biol., 92, 62–68). From these works, we generalize formulations and discuss the advantages of the novel approach. As an implication, we obtain a new way of estimating the incidence rate of a chronic disease from prevalence data. This enables us to employ cross-sectional studies where otherwise expensive and lengthy follow-up studies are needed. This article illustrates and validates the novel method in a simulation study about dementia in Germany.