Health-adjusted life years (HALYs) are population health measures permitting morbidity and mortality to be simultaneously described within a single number. They are useful for overall estimates of burden of disease, comparisons of the relative impact of specific illnesses and conditions on communities, and in economic analyses. Quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) and disability-adjusted life ye...

Alcohol use/dependence are an important risk factor for cirrhosis of the liver. The article aims to describe and conduct a comparative analysis of Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALY), Years of Life Lost (YLL) and Years Lived with Disability (YLD) of alcohol use disorders and non-viral cirrhosis in Brazil in 2008. DALY was calculated as the sum of YLL and YLD. For YLL estimates, the mean numbe...

BACKGROUND Depressive disorders were a leading cause of burden in the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 1990 and 2000 studies. Here, we analyze the burden of depressive disorders in GBD 2010 and present severity proportions, burden by country, region, age, sex, and year, as well as burden of depressive disorders as a risk factor for suicide and ischemic heart disease. METHODS AND FINDINGS Burden...

The calculation of disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) enables public health policy makers to compare the burden of disease of a specific disease with that of other (infectious) diseases. The incidence of a disease is important for the calculation of DALYs. To estimate the incidence of congenital toxoplasmosis (CT), a random sample of 10,008 dried blood spot filter paper cards from babies bo...

AIM To provide a comprehensive assessment of burden of selected cancers in Serbia. METHOD We calculated disability adjusted life years (DALY)-- the sum of the years of life lost (YLL) from premature mortality and the years lived with disability (YLD)--for cancers of stomach, colon and rectum, lung, breast, and cervical cancer for central Serbia and Vojvodina, Serbia and Montenegro. The obtain...

In the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) project the question has been raised whether disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) should measure average health only, or also capture concerns for fairness and equity. The following is a brief comment on this issue. I first distinguish between goodness in health care in terms of objective health gain, individual utility, and societal value. I then show th...

background: dietary risk factors constitute some of the leading risk factors for cardiovascular disease in iran. the current study reports the burden of ischemic heart disease (ihd) attributable to a low omega-3 fatty acids intake in iran using the data of the global burden of disease (gbd) study 2010. methods: we used data on iran for the years 1990, 2005, and 2010 derived from the gbd study c...

BACKGROUND The present study describes the epidemiological status of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in Iran based on the Global Burden of Disease study 2010 (the GBD 2010), and compares this with those of other neighboring countries. METHODS The burden of STIs from 1990 to 2010 in Iran was derived from a systematic study, namely the GBD 2010, which was conducted by the Institute for H...

Malaria is one of the highest contributors to morbidity and mortality in Zimbabwe. However, there is paucity of knowledge regarding disability adjusted life years (DALYs) as a measure of burden of malaria in affected communities. The DALYs metric was used to assess the burden of malaria in Gwanda District with the aim of contributing to a better understanding of the impact of disease on affecte...

INTRODUCTION The purpose of measuring the burden of disease involves aggregating morbidity and mortality components into a single indicator, the disability-adjusted life year (DALY), to measure how much and how people live and suffer the impact of a disease. OBJECTIVE To estimate the global burden of disease due to AIDS in a municipality of southern Brazil. METHODS An ecological study was c...