New ways of estimating excess mortality of chronic diseases: Insights from the illness-death model

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel PDE-based method to estimate excess mortality in chronic diseases using prevalence and incidence data, demonstrated through simulations and real diabetes data in German men.

Contribution

It presents a new approach linking prevalence, incidence, and excess mortality via PDEs, enhancing disease burden estimation methods.

Findings

Method successfully estimates excess mortality in simulations.

Application to German diabetes data demonstrates practical utility.

Provides a new tool for epidemiological analysis of chronic diseases.

Abstract

Recently, we have shown that the age-specific prevalence of a disease can be related to the transition rates in the illness-death model via a partial differential equation (PDE). In case of a chronic disease, we show that the PDE can be used to estimate excess mortality from prevalence and incidence. Applicability of the new method is demonstrated in a simulation and claims data about diabetes in German men.