Spatiotemporal trends in the global burden of drug-induced chronic liver diseases in thirty years

Abstract

Background: Drug-induced chronic liver disease (DICLD) is concerned due to its threat to health, but there are few data about its global burden. We evaluated the trends in the burden of DICLD in 204 countries in thirty years via the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) database.

Methods: Death rates and disability-adjusted life year (DALY) rates of DICLD from 1990 to 2019 were the main outcomes. The global DICLD burden and health development status were assessed by age, sex, year, location, and sociodemographic index (SDI) quintiles. Trends were estimated via a joinpoint regression model (JRM).

Results: The global death rates of DICLD declined from 2.59 per 100,000 population in 1990-2.50 per 100,000 population in 2019 (-3.60%), and DALY rates declined from 89.59 per 100,000 population in 1990-82.17 per 100,000 population in 2019 (-8.28%). In 2019, the most severe deaths and DALY losses caused by DICLD were mainly concentrated in Europe, Asia and Africa, with a wide distribution in Europe and the most significant in Eastern Europe. Males had higher death rates and DALY rates than those of females, although they were declining. Old patients, especially those aged > 75 years, had a greater risk of DICLD. The death rates and DALY rates were the highest in low-middle-SDI countries.

Conclusions: This study revealed the global burden of DICLD on death rates and DALY rates, which were slightly decreased during the study period. More efforts are needed to better prevent and manage DICLD.

Keywords

Drug-induced liver injury / Liver cirrhosis / Death rate / Disability-adjusted life year / Joinpoint regression model

Declarations

Not applicable.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Lingyan Yu: Formal analysis. Jianping Zhu: Formal analysis. Jieqiong Liu: Formal analysis. YU Zhenwei: Writing - review & editing, Supervision, Project administration, Conceptualization. Ke Qian: Writing - original draft, Visualization, Validation, Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Data curation.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Not applicable.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Data availability

The raw data are available at https://vizhub.healthdata.org/gbd-results/.

Funding

Not applicable.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

Not applicable.

Financial support and sponsorship

None.

Patient and public involvement statement

Patients or the public WERE NOT involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting, or dissemination plans of our research.

Authors' other information

Not applicable.

Appendix A. Supporting information

Supplementary data associated with this article can be found in the online version at doi:10.1016/j.prmedi.2026.100075.

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