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Time trends of chronic immune diseases by year of birth in Danish registries

  • IMMUNE DISEASES
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Abstract

Chronic immune diseases are often reported to be on the rise and are speculated to share early life risk factors. Here, we investigated year of birth as a common denominator for time trends using the consistent data source of the Danish National Patient Registry with 35 years nationwide coverage. Observational nationwide birth cohort registry study, where persons born in Denmark since 1953 were investigated for chronic immune diseases per person years at risk. Outcomes were defined by inpatient hospitalizations in pre-chosen age bins by year of birth in 5 year bins. A population of 3.8 million persons born in Denmark since 1953 was investigated for a total sum of 68 million person years in the ages 5–34 years. We found increasing trends by year of birth for juvenile arthritis age 10–14, adult asthma age 20–24, inflammatory bowel diseases age 20–24, and multiple sclerosis age 25–29, whereas type 1 diabetes age 15–19 was declining until birth year mid 1980s followed by a subsequent increase. Childhood asthma age 5–9 inpatient hospitalizations were relatively stable over time. Nationwide introduction of measles, mumps, rubella vaccine in 1987 did not alter the trends. Hospitalization for the chronic immune diseases adult asthma, juvenile arthritis, inflammatory bowel diseases and multiple sclerosis showed a general increasing trend by birth year in recent 35 years while diabetes 1 and childhood asthma seemed stable in this period. These results were not affected by the introduction of vaccinations against the major childhood viral infections.

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Abbreviations

CPR:

Unique Danish personal identification number

DOHaD:

Developmental origins of health and disease

IBD:

Inflammatory bowel diseases

ICD:

International classification of diseases

JA:

Juvenile arthritis

MMR:

Measles, mumps, rubella (vaccine)

MS:

Multiple sclerosis

T1D:

Type 1 diabetes

WHO:

World health organization

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Acknowledgements

We are aware of and comply with recognized codes of good research practice, including the Danish Code of Conduct for Research Integrity. We comply with national and international rules on the safety and rights of patients and healthy subjects, including Good Clinical Practice (GCP) as defined in the EU's Directive on Good Clinical Practice, the International Conference on Harmonisation's (ICH) good clinical practice guidelines and the Helsinki Declaration. We follow national and international rules on the processing of personal data, including the Danish Act on Processing of Personal Data and the practice of the Danish Data Inspectorate.

Funding

All funding received by COPSAC is listed on www.copsac.com. The Lundbeck Foundation (Grant No R16-A1694); The Ministry of Health (Grant No 903516); Danish Council for Strategic Research (Grant No 0603-00280B) and The Capital Region Research Foundation have provided core support to the COPSAC research center. No funding source had any involvement in this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. COPSAC, Copenhagen Prospective Studies on Asthma in Childhood, Herlev and Gentofte Hospital, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Astrid Sevelsted, Bo Chawes, Jakob Stokholm, Klaus Bønnelykke & Hans Bisgaard

Authors
  1. Astrid Sevelsted
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  2. Bo Chawes
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  3. Jakob Stokholm
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  4. Klaus Bønnelykke
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  5. Hans Bisgaard
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Contributions

The guarantor of the study is HB, from conception and design to conduct of the study and acquisition of data, data analysis, and interpretation of data. AS has done data analysis and written the first draft of the manuscript. All co-authors have provided important intellectual input and contributed considerably to the analyses and interpretation of the data. All authors guarantee that the accuracy and integrity of any part of the work has been appropriately investigated and resolved and all have approved the final version of the manuscript. The corresponding author had full access to the data and had final responsibility for the decision to submit for publication. No honorarium, grant, or other form of payment was given to any of the authors to produce this manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hans Bisgaard.

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Conflict of interest

All authors declare no potential, perceived, or real conflict of interest regarding the content of this manuscript. The funding agencies did not have any role in design and conduct of the study; collection, management, and interpretation of the data; or preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript. No pharmaceutical company was involved in the study. Hans Bisgaard: Has consultant arrangements with Chiesi Pharmaceuticals and Boehringer Ingelheim.

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Sevelsted, A., Chawes, B., Stokholm, J. et al. Time trends of chronic immune diseases by year of birth in Danish registries. Eur J Epidemiol 36, 1179–1185 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10654-021-00804-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10654-021-00804-x

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