Global, regional, and national age-sex specific all-cause and cause-specific mortality for 240 causes of death, 1990-2013: A systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013

TLDR: In the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013 (GBD 2013) as discussed by the authors, the authors used the GBD 2010 methods with some refinements to improve accuracy applied to an updated database of vital registration, survey, and census data.

About: This article is published in The Lancet.The article was published on 2015-01-10 and is currently open access. It has received 5792 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Mortality rate & Cause of death.

Figures

Figure 2: Site-years for all causes of death data by country, 1980–2013 ATG=Antigua and Barbuda. VCT=Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. LCA=Saint Lucia. TTO=Trinidad and Tobago. TLS=Timor-Leste. FSM=Federated States of Micronesia.

Figure 4: Change in global life expectancy at birth for males and females

Figure 8: Measures of convergence for causes of death in 188 countries

Table 4: Counterfactual deaths and population attributable fractions for diarrhoea and lower respiratory infection pathogens for 1990 and 2013

Figure 3: Total garbage and non-garbage coded deaths from vital registration and verbal autopsy sources, 1990–2013

Figure 11: Global years of life lost by large cause groupings for 1990 to 2013 COPD=chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Frequently asked questions

Q1. What are the contributions in this paper?

The Global Burden of Disease ( GBD ) study provides a unique comprehensive framework to systematically assess national trends in age-sex-specifi c all-cause and cause specifi c mortality is essential for the formation of global, regional, and national health policies this paper. 

Q2. What causes death in children younger than 5 years?

Diarrhoeal diseases, lower respiratory infections, neonatal causes, and malaria are still in the top fi ve causes of death in children younger than 5 years. 

Q3. What is the main purpose of the study?

Background Up-to-date evidence on levels and trends for age-sex-specifi c all-cause and cause-specifi c mortality is essential for the formation of global, regional, and national health policies. 

Q4. How did the death rate of the common causes of death decrease in 2013?

Global deaths from injury increased by 10·7%, from 4·3 million deaths in 1990 to 4·8 million in 2013; but age-standardised rates declined over the same period by 21%. 

Q5. How did the authors estimate the cause of death?

The authors estimated age-sex-specifi c all-cause mortality using the GBD 2010 methods with some refi nements to improve accuracy applied to an updated database of vital registration, survey, and census data. 

Q6. What is the average age of death for both sexes?

Findings Global life expectancy for both sexes increased from 65·3 years (UI 65·0–65·6) in 1990, to 71·5 years (UI 71·0–71·9) in 2013, while the number of deaths increased from 47·5 million (UI 46·8–48·2) to 54·9 million (UI 53·6–56·3) over the same interval. 

Q7. What is the underlying reason for the study?

The authors constrained cause-specifi c fractions within each age-sex-country-year group to sum to all-cause mortality based on draws from the uncertainty distributions. 

Q8. What is the role of age-standardised death rates in reducing deaths from cardiovascular diseases?

Decomposition of global and regional life expectancy showed the prominent role of reductions in age-standardised death rates for cardiovascular diseases and cancers in high-income regions, and reductions in child deaths from diarrhoea, lower respiratory infections, and neonatal causes in low-income regions. 

Q9. What is the main difference between the two?

For most countries, the general pattern of reductions in age-sex specifi c mortality has been associated with a progressive shift towards a larger share of the remaining deaths caused by non-communicable disease and injuries.