Skip to main content

Global deaths, prevalence and disability for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and asthma

A recent paper from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Chronic Respiratory Disease Collaborators examined the burden of ill-health caused by chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma. The paper was published in the journal The Lancet Respiratory Medicine.

COPD and asthma are common diseases with a heterogeneous distribution worldwide. In the paper, we presented findings for COPD and asthma from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors (GBD) 2015 study. The GBD study provides annual updates on estimates of deaths, prevalence, and disability for over 300 diseases and injuries, for 188 countries from 1990 to the most recent year.

We found that in 2015, 3.2 million people died from COPD worldwide, an increase of 11·6% compared with 1990. There was a decrease in age-standardised death rate of 41·9% but this was counteracted by population growth and ageing of the global population. From 1990 to 2015, the prevalence of COPD increased by 44%, whereas age-standardised prevalence decreased by 14·7%.

In 2015, 0·4 million people died from asthma globally, a decrease of 26·7% from 1990. The age-standardised death rate decreased by 58·8% (39·0 to 69·0). The prevalence of asthma increased by 12·6% whereas the age-standardised prevalence decreased by 17·7%.

Smoking and ambient particulate matter were the main risk factors for COPD followed by household air pollution, occupational particulates, ozone, and second-hand smoke. Together, these risks explained 73% of disability due to COPD. Smoking and occupational asthma precipitants were the only risks quantified for asthma in GBD, accounting for 16.5% (disability due to asthma.

In conclusion, asthma was the commonest chronic respiratory disease worldwide in 2015, with twice the number of cases of COPD. Deaths from COPD were eight times more common than deaths from asthma.

We also concluded that although there are laudable international collaborative efforts to make surveys of asthma and COPD more comparable, no consensus exists on case definitions and how to measure disease severity for population health measurements like GBD. Comparisons between countries and over time are important, as much of the chronic respiratory burden is either preventable or treatable with affordable interventions.

https://doi.org/10.1016/S2213-2600(17)30293-X


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What is the difference between primordial prevention and primary prevention?

Primordial prevention and primary prevention are both crucial strategies for promoting health, but they operate at different levels. Primordial prevention aims to address the root causes of health problems and improve the wider determinants of health. It focuses on preventing the emergence of risk factors in the first place by tackling the underlying social, economic, and environmental determinants of health. This involves broad, population-wide interventions such as: Policies that promote healthy food choices: Think about initiatives like taxing sugary drinks to discourage unhealthy consumption, or providing subsidies for fruits and vegetables to make them more accessible. Urban planning that prioritises well-being: This could include creating walkable neighborhoods with safe cycling routes, ensuring access to green spaces for recreation and relaxation, and designing communities that foster social connections. Social programs that address inequality: Initiatives aimed at reducing pov...
Post a Comment
Read more

What makes a good doctor – and who gets to decide?

What Makes a Good Doctor? This is the question that Waseem Jerjes and I explore in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine . It is a key question that underpins the architecture of medical education, clinical practice, regulation, and professional identity. It cannot be answered by regulators, educators, or employers in isolation. It must be answered together – by doctors and patients – revisited throughout a career, and adapted as society and the profession change. Without that shared reflection, the danger is not simply disillusionment, but the erosion of the moral foundations of clinical work. As we enter an era when diagnosis will increasingly involve artificial intelligence and when performance metrics reward volume over value, reclaiming this question as a professional one is imperative. The integrity of our institutions – and of the practitioners within them – depends on reimagining excellence in inclusive, relational terms. A good doctor is not a flawless technician or a f...
Post a Comment
Read more

Relevance Over Recall: Rethinking How AI Uses Clinical Data

Our article in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine argues that safe and effective AI in healthcare must incorporate mechanisms that emulate human judgement - down-weighting old, inaccurate or superseded information and prioritising what is recent, clinically relevant and reaffirmed - so that AI supports, rather than disrupts, high-quality patient care.  Clinicians constantly revise, reinterpret and filter past information so that only what is relevant, accurate and timely shapes present-day management decisions; medical records function as dynamic “working tools” rather than fixed archives. By contrast, many AI systems lack this capacity for selective forgetting and often treat all historical data as equally meaningful.  This can lead to outdated or low-confidence diagnoses being repeatedly resurfaced, persistent labels influencing clinical expectations, and irrelevant, long-resolved events cluttering summaries and decision-support outputs. Such indiscriminate recall...
1 comment
Read more