Abstract
Objective
We aimed to provide a better understanding of the secular trends in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) burden at the regional and national levels, contributing to identifying the areas with high burden needs and finding the potential areas requiring additional attention, which will facilitate the development of strategies tailored to RA burden.
Method
Data were obtained from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2019 study. We presented the secular trends in the prevalence, incidence, and years lived with disability (YLDs) of RA needs by sex, age, sociodemographic index (SDI), region, country, and category between 1990 and 2019 using data from the GBD 2019 study. The age-standardized rates (ASR) and its estimated annual percentage changes (EAPCs) are employed to describe the secular trends in RA.
Results
Globally, there were an estimated 18.5 million [95% confidence interval (CI) 31.53 to 41.74)] prevalent cases of RA, with 1.07 million (95% CI 0.95 to 1.18) incident cases per year and almost 2.43 million YLDs (95% CI 1.68 to 3.28) in 2019. The age-standardized prevalence and incidence rates estimated for RA were 224.25 per 100,000 and 12.21 per 100,000 in 2019, with EAPCs of 0.37 (95% CI − 0.32, 0.42) and 0.30 (95% CI 0.25 to 0.34), respectively. The corresponding age-standardized YLDs estimated was 29.35 per 100,000 in 2019, with an EAPC of 0.38 (95% CI: 0.33, 0.43). During the study period, the ASR of RA was consistently higher in females than in males. Moreover, the age-standardized YLD rate of RA was associated with the sociodemographic index (SDI) in 2019 across all 204 countries and territories (R = 0.28). The projections indicate that the age-standardized incidence rates (ASIR) trend will continue to increase from 2019 to 2040, with a projected ASIR of 10.48 and 4.63/100,000 for females and males, respectively.
Conclusions
RA is prevalent and remains a significant global public health challenge. Globally, the burden of RA has increased over the past 30 years and will continue to increase. Prevention and early treatment of RA are pivotal to avoiding disease onset and alleviating the enormous burden.
Key Points • The burden of rheumatoid arthritis is increasing globally. • Global estimates indicate that the number of RA incident cases will increase 1.4-fold globally, from approximately 1.07 million at the end of 2019 to approximately 1.5 million by 2040. |
Similar content being viewed by others
Data availability
These data can be found in a public, open-access repository. The datasets used for the analyses can be found at http://ghdx.healthdata. org/gbd- results- tool.
References
Smolen JS, Aletaha D, Barton A et al (2018) Rheumatoid arthritis. Nat Rev Dis Primers 4:18001
Aletaha D, Smolen JS (2018) Diagnosis and management of rheumatoid arthritis: a review. JAMA 320:1360–1372
Semb AG, Ikdahl E, Wibetoe G, Crowson C, Rollefstad S (2020) Atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease prevention in rheumatoid arthritis. Nat Rev Rheumatol 16:361–379
Lillegraven S, van der Heijde D, Uhlig T, Kvien TK, Haavardsholm EA (2012) What is the clinical relevance of erosions and joint space narrowing in RA? Nat Rev Rheumatol 8:117–120
Scott DL, Wolfe F, Huizinga TW (2010) Rheumatoid arthritis. Lancet 376:1094–1108
Myasoedova E, Davis J, Matteson EL, Crowson CS (2020) Is the epidemiology of rheumatoid arthritis changing? Results from a population-based incidence study, 1985–2014. Ann Rheum Dis 79:440–444
Papakonstantinou D (2021) Work disability and rheumatoid arthritis: predictive factors. Work 69:1293–1304
Hsieh PH, Wu O, Geue C et al (2020) Economic burden of rheumatoid arthritis: a systematic review of literature in biologic era. Ann Rheum Dis 79:771–777
Won S, Cho SK, Kim D et al (2018) Update on the prevalence and incidence of rheumatoid arthritis in Korea and an analysis of medical care and drug utilization. Rheumatol Int 38:649–656
Vergne-Salle P, Pouplin S, Trouvin AP et al (2020) The burden of pain in rheumatoid arthritis: impact of disease activity and psychological factors. Eur J Pain 24:1979–1989
Almutairi KB, Nossent JC, Preen DB, Keen HI, Inderjeeth CA (2021) The prevalence of rheumatoid arthritis: a systematic review of population-based studies. J Rheumatol 48:669–676
Shapira Y, Agmon-Levin N, Shoenfeld Y (2010) Geoepidemiology of autoimmune rheumatic diseases. Nat Rev Rheumatol 6:468–476
Sebbag E, Felten R, Sagez F et al (2019) The world-wide burden of musculoskeletal diseases: a systematic analysis of the World Health Organization Burden of Diseases Database. Ann Rheum Dis 78:844–848
Safiri S, Kolahi AA, Hoy D et al (2019) Global, regional and national burden of rheumatoid arthritis 1990–2017: a systematic analysis of the Global Burden of Disease study 2017. Ann Rheum Dis 78:1463–1471
GBD 2019 Risk Factors Collaborators (2020) Global burden of 87 risk factors in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019. Lancet 396(10258):1223–1249
Global age-sex-specific fertility (2020) mortality, healthy life expectancy (HALE), and population estimates in 204 countries and territories, 1950–2019: a comprehensive demographic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019. Lancet 396:1160–1203
GBD 2019 Diseases and Injuries Collaborators (2020) Global burden of 369 diseases and injuries in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the global burden of disease study 2019. Lancet 396(10258):1204–1222
Aletaha D, Neogi T, Silman AJ et al (2010) 2010 Rheumatoid arthritis classification criteria: an American College of Rheumatology/European League Against Rheumatism collaborative initiative. Arthritis Rheum 62:2569–2581
Ming Y, Linghui Z, Anping L, Suxia L, Kongming W (2020) Global burden and trend of acute lymphoblastic leukemia from 1990 to 2017. Aging (Albany NY) 12(22):22869–22891
Møller B, Fekjaer H, Hakulinen T et al (2003) Prediction of cancer incidence in the Nordic countries: empirical comparison of different approaches. Stat Med 22:2751–2766
Cross M, Smith E, Hoy D et al (2014) The global burden of rheumatoid arthritis: estimates from the global burden of disease 2010 study. Ann Rheum Dis 73:1316–1322
Castillo-Cañón JC, Trujillo-Cáceres SJ, Bautista-Molano W et al (2021) Rheumatoid arthritis in Colombia: a clinical profile and prevalence from a national registry. Clin Rheumatol 40:3565–3573
Lo J, Chan L, Flynn S (2021) A systematic review of the incidence, prevalence, costs, and activity and work limitations of amputation, osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, back pain, multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injury, stroke, and traumatic brain injury in the United States: A 2019 Update. Arch Phys Med Rehabil 102:115–131
Sparks JA, Jin Y, Cho SK et al (2021) Prevalence, incidence and cause-specific mortality of rheumatoid arthritis-associated interstitial lung disease among older rheumatoid arthritis patients. Rheumatology (Oxford) 60:3689–3698
Hresko A, Lin TC, Solomon DH (2018) Medical care costs associated with rheumatoid arthritis in the US: A systematic literature review and meta-analysis. Arthritis Care Res (Hoboken) 70:1431–1438
Chen CI, Wang L, Wei W, Yuce H, Phillips K (2018) Burden of rheumatoid arthritis among US Medicare population: co-morbidities, health-care resource utilization and costs. Rheumatol Adv Pract 2:rky005
van der Woude D, van der Helm-van MAHM (2018) Update on the epidemiology, risk factors, and disease outcomes of rheumatoid arthritis. Best Pract Res Clin Rheumatol 32:174–187
Smolen JS, Aletaha D, McInnes IB (2016) Rheumatoid arthritis. Lancet 388:2023–2038
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the staff and collaborators of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation for making these publicly available data possible.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
GS, XL, and ZL designed the study. GS, XL, ZL, WL, and XL analyzed the data and performed the statistical analyses. GS, XL, and ZL drafted the initial manuscript. HRZ and XYC reviewed the key elements of the drafted manuscript. All authors approved the final version of the manuscript.
Corresponding authors
Ethics declarations
Ethics approval
This study is based on a public database; therefore, ethical approval is not needed.
Patient and public involvement
Researchers did not involve patients or the public in the design, conduct, reporting, or dissemination of the study.
Patient consent for publication
Not required.
Disclosures
None.
Provenance and peer review
The study was not commissioned; it was peer-reviewed.
Disclaimer
The study is based on publicly available information and only represents the views of its authors and not those of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
Additional information
Publisher's note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary Information
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Shi, G., Liao, X., Lin, Z. et al. Estimation of the global prevalence, incidence, years lived with disability of rheumatoid arthritis in 2019 and forecasted incidence in 2040: results from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019. Clin Rheumatol 42, 2297–2309 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10067-023-06628-2
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10067-023-06628-2