Analysis of global prevalence, DALY and trends of inflammatory bowel disease and their correlations with sociodemographic index: Data from 1990 to 2019

Background

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a kind of chronic inflammatory disorders of the gastrointestinal tract with diverse prevalence rates and patterns globally. Accurate comprehension of the disease's epidemiological characteristics is imperative for disease control and prevention all over the world.

Objective

To provide the most updated estimates on the global burden of IBD using the 2019 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study data, to systematically analyze the IBD epidemiological characteristics at the global, regional, and national levels including the prevalence, incidence, and disability-adjusted life years (DALY) rates, and to analyze the correlations of the socioeconomic development level with IBD epidemiological characteristics.

Methods

We conducted an overall analysis of the global, regional, and national burden of IBD from 1990 to 2019, data from the 2019 GBD study. The GBD's classification of the world into 21 regions and 204 countries and territories facilitated a thorough examination. Age-standardized estimated annual percentage changes (EAPCs) were computed to assess the temporal trends in IBD age-standardized rates (ASRs), with age standardization employed to mitigate potential confounding effects from age structure. The sociodemographic Index (SDI) was used to correlate the socioeconomic development level with the epidemiological characteristics of IBD.

Results

From 1990 to 2019, the global age-standardized prevalence, incidence, and DALY rates of IBD remained high. There was a slight downward trend in the global age-standardized incidence and DALY rates of IBD and men exhibited higher DALY rates than women. In 2019, high-income North America recorded the highest age-standardized prevalence, incidence, and DALY rates, while Oceania had the lowest age-standardized prevalence and incidence rates. South Asia had the lowest age-standardized DALY rates. The age-standardized mortality and DALY rates decreased as SDI values increased and remained higher than the expected levels over the past three decades. A negative correlation was observed between age-standardized DALY rates and SDI at the national level.

Conclusions

This analysis of the GBD 2019 database demonstrates that the overall global burden of IBD is still high. Meanwhile, an increasing disease burden is observed in the middle and low SDI locations.