Parkinson's disease incidence and prevalence assessment in France using the national healthcare insurance database

Background and purpose The incidence and prevalence of Parkinson's disease are important for public health planning yet there is a lack of representative, up‐to‐date estimations for France. Methods For this cross‐sectional study, subjects with suspected Parkinson's were identified in the EGB database, a 1/97 random sample of the national healthcare insurance database, linked to the national hospital‐discharge summary database. Incidence and prevalence were estimated using a specific definition that included those with a diagnosis (hospitalization or listed as a long‐term chronic disease for full reimbursement) and a sensitive definition that also included those with an indicative drug reimbursement profile. Estimations were extrapolated to the national population, standardizing on age and gender. Results According to either the specific or the sensitive definitions, the annual incidence of Parkinson's disease during the study period was respectively 36 and 49 per 100 000 person‐years and prevalence in 2010 was 308–410 per 100 000 persons in the population as a whole. According to the age groups 55–64, 65–74, 75–84 and ≥85 years incidence was respectively 33–46, 139–172, 301–363 and 442–560 per 100 000 person‐years amongst men and 32–55, 81–117, 203–270 and 251–313 per 100 000 person‐years amongst women. The 2010 prevalence stratified by the same age groups was 293–376, 898–1161, 2524–3011 and 3760–4578 per 100 000 persons amongst men and 199–351, 618–889, 1910–2433 and 2504–3263 per 100 000 persons amongst women. Conclusions The specific and sensitive definitions of disease bracket the true values; the relatively small range indicates that the current study provides good estimations of incidence and prevalence of Parkinson's disease for recent years in France.