About half of the world’s population in 2021 had a neurological disease

According to the study, 3.4 billion people in the world were affected in 2021 by a neurological disease, such as stroke, neonatal encephalopathy, migraine, Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, neuropathy diabetes, meningitis, epilepsy and cancer are the most responsible for the loss of health in the nervous system.

The study, which assessed the burden of diseases, injuries and risk factors, highlights that the number of people who lived or died between 1990 and 2021 with neurological pathologies, such as stroke, Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias or meningitis, grew substantially due to only to the increase and aging of the population, but also due to “increased exposure to environmental, metabolic and lifestyle risk factors”.

In 2021, tension headaches and migraines together affected around 3.1 billion people globally, according to estimates set out in work published by The Lancet Neurology, which highlights that diabetic neuropathy was the neurological disease that it grew from 1990 to 2021, with cases more than tripling, reaching 206 million people worldwide three years ago.

“This is in line with the increase in the global prevalence of diabetes”, highlighted, cited in a statement by the medical journal, one of the study’s co-authors, Liane Ong, from the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, in the United States.

The study concluded that in 2021, neurological pathologies were the main responsible for the burden of diseases on a global scale, ahead of cardiovascular diseases, due to the years of loss of healthy life due to illness, disability or premature death.

Sub-Saharan Africa was the region of the planet that had the greatest impact on nervous system diseases.

“Many current strategies to reduce neurological diseases have low effectiveness or are not sufficiently applied, as is the case in some of the fastest growing but largely preventable diseases such as diabetic neuropathy and neonatal diseases. For many other diseases there is no cure, which highlights the importance of greater investment and research into new interventions and potentially modifiable risk factors”, stated, cited in the same statement, neurologist Valery Feigin, co-author of the study and who directs the Institute of Applied Neuroscience from the University of Auckland, New Zealand.