Estimation of age-specific excess mortality of men and women with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in Germany

TL;DR

This study employs a Bayesian MCMC method to estimate age-specific excess mortality in German men and women with rheumatoid arthritis, revealing higher mortality ratios in younger ages that decline with age.

Contribution

It introduces a novel Bayesian MCMC approach using prevalence and incidence data to estimate age-specific mortality rate ratios for RA patients in Germany.

Findings

Highest mortality rate ratios in young ages (around 4.0 for men, 3.5 for women)

Ratios decline to near 1.0 at older ages (around 92.5 years)

Credibility intervals decrease with increasing age

Abstract

A MCMC approach is used to estimate the age-specific mortality rate ratio for German men and women with RA. For constructing priors, we calculate a range of admissible values from prevalence and incidence data based on about 60 million people in Germany. Using these priors, MCMC mimics and compares estimated mortality to the findings of a recent register study from Denmark. It is estimated that the mortality rate ratio is highest in the young ages (4.0 and 3.5 for men and women aged 17.5 years, respectively) and declines towards higher ages (1.0 and 1.2 for men and women aged 92.5 years, respectively). The lengths of the credibility intervals decrease from younger towards older ages.