Parkinson's disease incidence and prevalence assessment in France using the national healthcare insurance database

Background and purpose: The incidence and prevalence of Parkinson's disease are important for public health planning yet there is a lack of representative, up-to-date estimations for France.

Methods: For this cross-sectional study, subjects with suspected Parkinson's were identified in the EGB database, a 1/97 random sample of the national healthcare insurance database, linked to the national hospital-discharge summary database. Incidence and prevalence were estimated using a specific definition that included those with a diagnosis (hospitalization or listed as a long-term chronic disease for full reimbursement) and a sensitive definition that also included those with an indicative drug reimbursement profile. Estimations were extrapolated to the national population, standardizing on age and gender.

Results: According to either the specific or the sensitive definitions, the annual incidence of Parkinson's disease during the study period was respectively 36 and 49 per 100,000 person-years and prevalence in 2010 was 308-410 per 100,000 persons in the population as a whole. According to the age groups 55-64, 65-74, 75-84 and ≥85 years incidence was respectively 33-46, 139-172, 301-363 and 442-560 per 100,000 person-years amongst men and 32-55, 81-117, 203-270 and 251-313 per 100,000 person-years amongst women. The 2010 prevalence stratified by the same age groups was 293-376, 898-1161, 2524-3011 and 3760-4578 per 100,000 persons amongst men and 199-351, 618-889, 1910-2433 and 2504-3263 per 100,000 persons amongst women.

Conclusions: The specific and sensitive definitions of disease bracket the true values; the relatively small range indicates that the current study provides good estimations of incidence and prevalence of Parkinson's disease for recent years in France.