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Despite decline, rate of infectious disease deaths still significant in Spain
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Before and after the HIV/AIDS epidemic, Spain’s rate of infectious disease deaths has been on the decline, according to recent findings.
However, researchers said infectious diseases continue to be a major cause of death in Spain today.
In the study, researchers evaluated ICD-9 and ICD-10 codes of underlying causes of death obtained from the Spanish National Statistics Institute (NSI) between 1980 and 2011 — this information was used to determine mortality rates for infectious diseases.
Data were collected on 10 diseases found to be responsible for more than 90% of all deaths, including pneumonia, septicemia, cardiac infections, HIV/AIDS, renal infections, tuberculosis, acute respiratory infection, influenza, viral hepatitis and intestinal infections.
The researchers assessed trends in mortality based on sex, age group and each of the 10 selected diseases.
From 1980 to 2011, there were 628,673 infectious disease-related deaths, with an annual change in the mortality rate of –1.6%. The average mortality rate from infectious diseases was 48.5 deaths/100,000 persons. The HIV/AIDS epidemic interrupted the decline in infectious disease-related deaths in the late 1980s, which mostly affected men aged 25 to 44 years. However, the introduction of antiretroviral therapy in Spain in 1996 resulted in major changes in the mortality rate.
The ICD codes indicated that the most frequent underlying cause of death was pneumonia. While the largest decrease in infectious disease-related deaths was among children aged 0 to 4 years (47.4 deaths/100,000 persons in 1980 vs. 8.4 deaths/100,000 persons in 2011), the lowest rates were observed among people aged 5 to 24 years.
“Despite a decrease in deaths caused by infectious diseases that was interrupted by HIV/AIDS, infectious diseases continue to be a major cause of death, which is an indicator of their role in public health,” the researchers wrote. “In the twenty-first century, the incidence of such diseases might be increased by a series of factors, ranging from climate change, which alters the ecology of vectors, to globalization, which involves exchange of goods and mobility of persons for leisure, occupational, or survival purposes.”
Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.
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