43% of the world’s population suffers from neurological diseases

More than 43% of the world’s population suffers from some type of neurological disease, but the disability they cause has increased by more than 18% over the past 20 years, making neurological diseases the leading cause of disability worldwide. More than 3.4 billion people worldwide suffer from disability due to some type of neurological disease, and more than 11 million people die each year from one of these pathologies.
In Spain, more than 23 million people suffer from some form of neurological disease, and it is worrying that the prevalence is 18% higher than the world average and 1.7% higher than the Western European average, mainly due to the ageing of our population.
In addition, they are also the leading cause of disability in Spain, accounting for 44% of cases of disability due to chronic diseases, and last year, according to the latest data from the National Statistics Institute (INE), they accounted for 14% of disability deaths, with diseases such as dementia (more than 35,000 deaths, mainly due to Alzheimer’s) or stroke (almost 26,000 deaths) topping the table of the main causes of death in Spain in 2023.
The vast majority of neurological diseases are chronic, meaning they cannot be cured, and although significant progress has been made in recent years in improving the treatment of many of them, they continue to cause significant disability and mortality. “Diseases such as stroke, Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, encephalitis and meningitis or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) are responsible for a large percentage of deaths worldwide and, in addition, along with other neurological diseases such as migraine, they are also part of the global burden of disability,” said Jesús Porta-Etessam, president of the Spanish Society of Neurology (SEN).

Risk factors

Addressing risk factors for many of these diseases can dramatically alter the outcome of neurological diseases. “There are numerous studies that show that nearly 90% of stroke cases, nearly 40% of dementia cases, or nearly 30% of epilepsy cases could be avoided by adopting healthy brain habits.”
The latest study, published in March this year, found that more than 84% of stroke cases could potentially be prevented by reducing exposure to 18 already identified risk factors (the biggest risk factor for stroke is hypertension (57.3%)), which control lead exposure could reduce the burden of mental retardation by 63%, and diabetes control could reduce the burden of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias by nearly 15%.

Tobacco and alcohol

Smoking is also associated with an increased risk of neurological diseases such as multiple sclerosis, dementia or stroke, and alcohol abuse is associated with a risk of epilepsy that is almost four times higher in men (11%) than in women (3%). In addition, factors such as sleep, stress and social isolation are increasingly recognized as major contributors to the development of neurological pathologies, as well as the type of diet and exercise we do.
According to Porta-Etessam, “When we talk about brain health and prevention, we are talking about protecting our health both now and in the future. It is not just a question of reacting to the onset of a particular type of neurological disease, but rather trying to instill a culture of preventing neurological diseases from an early age, mitigating their impact by controlling and/or avoiding risk factors.”

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