In the world in 2021, more than 3 billion people suffered from at least one neurological condition, pathologies that are the main cause of illness and disability.
This is what emerges from a study coordinated by the World Health Organization published in Lancet Neurology.
According to the study, the neurological conditions that contributed most to health loss in 2021 were stroke, neonatal brain injury, migraines, dementia, diabetic neuropathy, meningitis, epilepsy, neurological complications from preterm birth, autism spectrum disorder and tumors of the nervous system .
Diabetic neuropathy has grown the fastest: in 30 years the number of people affected by it has more than tripled, exceeding 200 million.
There are also new entries on the list, such as the neurological complications of Covid-19, which affected 23 million people in 2021.
The research also highlighted that important progress could be achieved by intervening on risk factors.
Controlling blood pressure and pollution levels could prevent up to 84% of years of healthy life lost by stroke.
Similarly, preventing lead exposure could reduce the burden of idiopathic intellectual disability by 63.1%, and reducing high blood glucose levels could lower the burden of dementia by 14.6%.
Intervening on smoking could then reduce the risk of stroke, dementia and multiple sclerosis.
“This study should serve as an urgent call to action to enable increasing numbers of people with neurological conditions to access the quality care and rehabilitation they need. It is more important than ever to ensure brain health is better understood , valued and protected, from early childhood to old age,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.
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