The international incidence and prevalence of neurologic conditions

Abstract

One of the many aims of the NPHSNC was to examine the epidemiology, including the incidence and prevalence, of 15 neurologic conditions: Alz- heimer disease (AD) and related dementia, amyotro- phic lateral sclerosis (ALS), brain tumors, cerebral palsy, dystonia, epilepsy, Huntington disease (HD), hydrocephalus, multiple sclerosis, muscular dystro- phy, Parkinson disease (PD), spina bifida, spinal cord injury (SCI), Tourette syndrome, and traumatic brain injury (TBI). In addition to performing systematic reviews on the worldwide incidence and prevalence of these neurologic conditions, we examined issues arising as a result of heterogeneity in the conduct of international epidemiologic studies in neurology. This tremendous effort involved the review of 65,529 abstracts and 4,650 full-text articles, with 1,242 research studies ultimately included in our sys- tematic reviews.