The relative importance and stability of disease burden causes over time: summarizing regional trends on disease burden for 290 causes over 28 years.

Background: Since the Global Burden of Disease study (GBD) has become more comprehensive, data for hundreds of causes of disease burden, measured using Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs), have become increasingly available for almost every part of the world. However, undergoing any systematic comparative analysis of the trends can be challenging given the quantity of data that must be presented.

Methods: We use the GBD data to describe trends in cause-specific DALY rates for eight regions.