Publications by authors named "Dietrich PlaSS"

Background: Exposure to nitrogen dioxide (NO) is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular, respiratory, and other diseases and health outcomes. Although NO emissions have decreased in Germany, concentrations currently observed still pose a threat to population health. The aim of this study is to estimate the environmental burden of disease (EBD) resulting from long-term NO exposure in Germany from 2010 to 2021.

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Human biomonitoring (HBM) data indicate that exposure to pyrethroids is widespread in Europe, with significantly higher exposure observed in children compared to adults. Epidemiological, toxicological, and mechanistic studies raise concerns for potential human health effects, particularly, behavioral effects such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children at low levels of exposure. Based on an exposure-response function from a single European study and on available quality-assured and harmonized HBM data collected in France, Germany, Iceland, Switzerland, and Israel, a preliminary estimate of the environmental burden of disease for ADHD associated with pyrethroid exposure was made for individuals aged 0-19 years.

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Article Synopsis
  • The Burden of Disease (BOD) approach, starting from the Global Burden of Disease study in the 1990s, aims to enhance monitoring of population health but faces challenges due to inconsistencies in DALY metric reporting.
  • To address these issues, the STROBOD statement was developed to standardize the reporting of DALY calculation studies, consisting of 28 items in six sections for improved transparency and comparability.
  • The initial STROBOD statement serves as a framework for BOD research, with plans for continuous evaluation and potential specialized checklists in future versions to cater to specific applications like injury or risk factor estimation.
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Background: The European Union (EU) faces many health-related challenges. Burden of diseases information and the resulting trends over time are essential for health planning. This paper reports estimates of disease burden in the EU and individual 27 EU countries in 2019, and compares them with those in 2010.

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Objectives: Within the framework of the burden of disease (BoD) approach, disease and injury burden estimates attributable to risk factors are a useful guide for policy formulation and priority setting in disease prevention. Considering the important differences in methods, and their impact on burden estimates, we conducted a scoping literature review to: (1) map the BoD assessments including risk factors performed across Europe; and (2) identify the methodological choices in comparative risk assessment (CRA) and risk assessment methods.

Methods: We searched multiple literature databases, including grey literature websites and targeted public health agencies websites.

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Article Synopsis
  • This review looked at how researchers in Europe study the concept of disability-adjusted life years (DALY) for infectious diseases.
  • They found 105 studies that met their criteria, with most focusing on food- and water-borne diseases.
  • The number of these studies has grown, particularly from 2015 to 2022, and there's a need for better guidelines to help make results more comparable.
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Background: .Summary measures such as disability-adjusted life years (DALY) are becoming increasingly important for the standardized assessment of the burden of disease due to death and disability. The BURDEN 2020 pilot project was designed as an independent burden-of-disease study for Germany, which was based on nationwide data, but which also yielded regional estimates.

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Ambient particulate matter (PM) pollution is an important threat to human health. The aim of this study is to estimate the environmental burden of disease (EBD) for the German population associated with PM exposure in Germany for the years 2010 until 2018. The EBD method was used to quantify relevant indicators, e.

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Background: Calculating the disease burden due to injury is complex, as it requires many methodological choices. Until now, an overview of the methodological design choices that have been made in burden of disease (BoD) studies in injury populations is not available. The aim of this systematic literature review was to identify existing injury BoD studies undertaken across Europe and to comprehensively review the methodological design choices and assumption parameters that have been made to calculate years of life lost (YLL) and years lived with disability (YLD) in these studies.

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Background: Burden of disease analyses quantify population health and provide comprehensive overviews of the health status of countries or specific population groups. The comparative risk assessment (CRA) methodology is commonly used to estimate the share of the burden attributable to risk factors. The aim of this paper is to identify and address some selected important challenges associated with CRA, illustrated by examples, and to discuss ways to handle them.

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Background: Assessment of disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) resulting from non-communicable diseases (NCDs) requires specific calculation methods and input data. The aims of this study were to (i) identify existing NCD burden of disease (BoD) activities in Europe; (ii) collate information on data sources for mortality and morbidity; and (iii) provide an overview of NCD-specific methods for calculating NCD DALYs.

Methods: NCD BoD studies were systematically searched in international electronic literature databases and in grey literature.

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Background: The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study has generated a wealth of data on death and disability outcomes in Europe. It is important to identify the disease burden that is attributable to risk factors and, therefore, amenable to interventions. This paper reports the burden attributable to risk factors, in deaths and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), in the 28 European Union (EU) countries, comparing exposure to risks between them, from 2007 to 2017.

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Article Synopsis
  • Non-fatal illnesses like back pain, headaches, and depression are major reasons why people have a harder time living healthy lives, known as disability-adjusted life years (DALYs).
  • Monitoring how long people live with these illnesses is especially important for well-developed countries, as these issues significantly contribute to overall health problems.
  • There's not enough detailed data on how serious these health issues are, making it tough to understand changes over time or in different places, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic that made accessing healthcare more difficult.
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Background: The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic presented major challenges to the health sector in 2020. The burden of disease arising from COVID-19 can be expressed as the number of years of life lost to disease or death. For example, death at age 40 involves a loss of far more years of life than death at age 80.

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Background: Knowing which diseases and causes of death account for most of the years of life lost (YLL) can help to better target appropriate prevention and intervention measures. The YLL in Germany for specific causes of death were estimated as part of the BURDEN 2020 project at the Robert Koch Institute.

Methods: Data from cause-of-death statistics were used for the analysis.

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Background: The cause of death statistics in Germany include a relatively high share (26% in 2017) of ill-defined deaths (IDD). To make use of the cause of death statistics for Burden of Disease calculations we redistribute those IDD to valid causes of death.

Methods: The process of proportional redistribution is described in detail.

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Background: Evidence has emerged showing that elderly people and those with pre-existing chronic health conditions may be at higher risk of developing severe health consequences from COVID-19. In Europe, this is of particular relevance with ageing populations living with non-communicable diseases, multi-morbidity and frailty. Published estimates of Years Lived with Disability (YLD) from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study help to characterise the extent of these effects.

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In the project BURDEN 2020 - "The burden of disease in Germany and its regions" - the years of life lost (YLL) due to premature mortality are calculated on the basis of official cause-of-death statistics. This requires the identification and redistribution of the so-called ill-defined ICD codes. "Ill-defined" means that an ICD code does not sufficiently reflect the cause of death, such that it is not informative for the calculation of the burden of disease.

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Traffic noise is nearly ubiquitous and thus can affect the health of many people. Using the German noise mapping data according to the Directive 2002/49/EC of 2017 and exposure-response functions for ischemic heart disease, noise annoyance and sleep disturbance assessed by the World Health Organization's Environmental Noise Guidelines for the European Region the burden of disease due to traffic noise is quantified. The burden of disease is expressed in disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) and its components.

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Background: High-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP) is a sensitive biomarker of systemic inflammation and is related to the development and progression of cardiometabolic diseases. Beyond individual-level determinants, characteristics of the residential physical and social environment are increasingly recognized as contextual determinants of systemic inflammation and cardiometabolic risks. Based on a large nationwide sample of adults in Germany, we analyzed the cross-sectional association of hsCRP with residential environment characteristics.

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Erratum to:Bundesgesundheitsbl (2018) https://doi.org/10.1007/s00103-018-2793-0 The original publication of this article contained an error in the list of the authors, in which the contributing author Christian Schmidt was missing.

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Background: Evidence-based policy measures need non-interest-guided information about the health status of a population and the diseases that affect the population the most. In such cases, a national burden of disease study can provide reliable insights at the regional level.

Aim: This article presents the potential of the BURDEN 2020 project and its expected outcome for Germany at the national and regional level.

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Background: Evidence-based political measures need reliable information about the health status of a population and the determinants affecting health. Here, environment and health indicators can provide helpful additional insights.

Aim: This article provides an overview of existing indicators in the field of environment and health.

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