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Abstract

In order to describe the incidence of Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) in Stockholm County (SC) and hospital use by GBS patients, we conducted a retrospective epidemiological study on GBS covering 1973-1991, using the Hospital Inpatient Register in SC. There were 556 patients, bona fide residents in the county during the study period, discharged from hospitals with GBS diagnosis. The mean annual incidence, age-adjusted to the European population, was 1.84 (2.15 for males and 1.57 for females) per 100,000 population. The incidence increased with age and showed a bimodal distribution with peaks in the 10-29 and 70-79 age-groups. Annual incidence rates were highest in 1978 and 1983. Neither heterogeneity of annual or monthly rates nor linear trends during the period were found to be significant, except in 1978 for patients below 40 years of age, RR 1.72 (95% CI 1.08-2.71) and in 1983 for patients at ages 40 years and over, RR 1.48 (95% CI 1.02-2.16), when compared with GBS incidences in the same age-groups during the remaining study period. The mean +/- SD duration of hospital stay, including long-term care or rehabilitation institutions, for GBS patients, was 86 +/- 210 days, with considerably longer duration for the elderly. The rate of hospital use by GBS patients was 162 days per 100,000 inhabitants per year. In accordance with results of prior studies in South-West Stockholm and described GBS epidemics in Sweden, this study supports that an etiologically different subgroup of GBS exists at ages below 40 years, and that relevant but small time-space variations, such as the reported zimeldine epidemic in 1983, resist detection by hospital data analysis of pooled GBS cases. Efficient epidemiological surveillance of GBS may require targeted development of clinico-epidemiological tools.

Decreased Incidence of Guillain-Barré Syndrome during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Retrospective Population-Based Study

“…During the pre-pandemic period, the incidence was stable and consistent with previously reported data from countries with similar demographics. Jiang et al [ 14 ] reported an incidence of 1.84/100,000 PY in Stockholm during the period 1978–1991, compared to 1.35/100,000 PY in our study. The use of different diagnostic criteria might explain the difference at least partly; Jiang and colleagues used the National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Disorders and Stroke (NINCDS) criteria, while the Brighton criteria were applied in our study.…”

The Epidemiology of Guillain-Barré Syndrome Worldwide

“…In the majority of studies that included incidence rates broken down by age, increases in rates were observed in most studies of people aged 50 years or more [11, 17, 22, 26, 31-33, 35-39, 46-49] , with some showing a decrease in the highest age group of 6 80 years [22,26,31,[35][36][37][38][47][48][49] .…”

“…In the studies that investigated incidence in children (0-9 years) and teenagers (10-19 years), most showed an increase in incidence with increasing age [19,37,38,[48][49][50][51] , although some demonstrated decreases [12,13,17,46,47] . Figures in parentheses are 95% CI.…”