Abstract
Introduction
Rheumatic heart disease is considered well-controlled in high-income countries; however, its actual trends in mortality remain unclarified. We analyzed trends in mortality from rheumatic heart disease in association with age, period, and birth cohort.
Methods
We analyzed the WHO mortality database to determine trends in mortality from rheumatic heart disease in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Australia, USA, and Canada from 2000 to 2020. We used age-cohort-period modeling to estimate cohort and period effects. Net drift (overall annual percentage change), local drift (annual percentage change in each age group) and heterogeneity were calculated.
Results
In the most recent year, crude mortality rates and age-standardized mortality rates ranged from 1.10 in the USA to 6.17 in Germany, and 0.32 (95% CI 0.31–0.34) in Japan and 1.70 (95% CI 1.65–1.75) in Germany, respectively. During the observation period, while Germany had a constant trend in overall annual percentage change, all the other countries had significant decreasing trends (p < 0.0001, respectively). Annual percent change was not homogeneous across each group in all 8 countries (pheterogeneity < 0.0001), with 2 peaks in the younger and older age categories. In Germany, Italy, Australia, and Canada, we found increasing mortality rates among older patients. Improving period and cohort risks for rheumatic heart disease mortality were generally observed, excluding Germany where the period effect was worsening and the cohort effect was constant.
Conclusions
Mortality trends from rheumatic heart disease were decreasing in the study high-income countries except for Germany where higher mortality and two peaks in annual percentage change in younger and older age groups warrant further investigation.
Graphical Abstract
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Data availability
The full dataset supporting the conclusions of this article is available at WHO mortality database, https://www.who.int/data/mortality/.
Abbreviations
- APC:
-
Annual percentage change
- FDA:
-
The food and drug administration
- RHD:
-
Rheumatic heart disease
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We are thankful for the data publicly made available by WHO. We are solely responsible to the analyses, interpretations, or conclusions of this publication.
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Hibino, M., Halkos, M.E., Murphy, D.A. et al. Age period cohort analysis of rheumatic heart disease in high-income countries. Clin Res Cardiol 112, 1568–1576 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00392-023-02168-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00392-023-02168-6