Temporal trends in the prevalence of autoimmune diseases from 1990 to 2019.

AIM: To describe current situation and analyze temporal trends of prevalence for four autoimmune diseases including rheumatoid arthritis (RA), inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), multiple sclerosis (MS) and psoriasis, at the global, continental, and national levels. METHODS: The estimates and 95% uncertainty interval (UI) for age-standardized prevalence rate (ASPR) of RA, IBD, MS and psoriasis were obtained from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2019. ASPR of RA, IBD, MS and psoriasis in 2019 was illustrated at the global, continental, and national levels. Joinpoint regression analysis was adopted to analyze the 1990-2019 temporal trends by calculating the annual percentage change (APC) and average APC (AAPC), as well as their 95% confidence interval (CI). RESULTS: In 2019, the global ASPR of RA, IBD, MS and psoriasis was 224.25 (95% UI: 204.94 to 245.99), 59.25 (95% UI: 52.78 to 66.47), 21.25 (95% UI: 18.52 to 23.91) and 503.62 (95% UI: 486.92 to 519.22), respectively, with ASPRs generally higher in Europe and America than in Africa and Asia. From 1990 to 2019, the global ASPR increased significantly for RA (AAPC = 0.27%, 95% CI: 0.24 to 0.30; P < 0.001) and decreased significantly for IBD (AAPC = -0.73%, 95% CI: -0.76 to -0.70; P < 0.001), MS (AAPC = -0.22%, 95% CI: -0.25 to -0.18; P < 0.001) and psoriasis (AAPC = -0.93%, 95% CI: -0.95 to -0.91; P < 0.001), with the most substantial changes occurring at different continents and periods. The trends of ASPR of these four autoimmune diseases varied significantly across 204 countries and territories. CONCLUSIONS: There is a strong heterogeneity in prevalence (2019), as well as their temporal trends (1990-2019) of autoimmune diseases across the world, highlighting the strong distributive inequities of autoimmune diseases worldwide, which may be instructive for better understanding the epidemiology of these diseases, appropriately allocating the medical resources, as well as making relevant health policies.

Association between meteorological factors and hospital admissions for uveitis in Hefei, China: a time-series study.

Meteorological variables are regarded as risk factors for inflammatory diseases, but their associations with uveitis, one of the leading causes accounting for blindness worldwide with an estimated prevalence of 38-714 cases/100,000 person-years, have not been thoroughly investigated. The present study explored the short-term association between meteorological variables and hospital admissions for uveitis in Hefei City, China. Daily data on uveitis hospital admissions and meteorological variables including mean temperature (MT) (°C), diurnal temperature range (DTR) (°C), and relative humidity (RH) (%), from 2014 to 2020, were collected. A time-series study using generalized linear model combined with distributed lag non-linear model was applied. Totally, 1911 admissions for uveitis including 894 first admissions and 1017 readmissions were reported during the study period. The associations of high percentile of MT (75th, 24.5℃) and low percentile of DTR (25th, 5.4℃) with uveitis admissions were observed to be statistically significant from lag9 (RR = 1.041, 95%CI: 1.002-1.081) to lag11 (RR = 1.053, 95%CI: 1.003-1.104) and lag4 (RR = 1.053, 95%CI: 1.019-1.088) to lag5 (RR = 1.052, 95%CI: 1.020-1.085), respectively. Moreover, a significant association between low percentile of RH (1th, 44%) and uveitis admissions appeared at lag0-8 (RR = 1.869, 95%CI: 1.017-3.434) and lasted until lag0-13 (RR = 2.539, 95%CI: 1.102-5.850) in the cumulative lag structure. Subgroup analyses indicated that males and the young seemed to be more sensitive to high MT exposure, while females appeared to be more vulnerable to low DTR exposure. Interestingly, both the young and the elderly are susceptible to low DTR and low RH exposure. Furthermore, high MT and low DTR exposure were associated with increased risk of first admission for uveitis. In summary, exposure to high-value of MT and low-value of DTR and RH may increase the hospital admissions for uveitis, especially for the status of first admission.