Background: Movement disorders are chronic diseases with an increasing prevalence in old age. Because these disorders pose a major challenge to patients, families, and health care systems, there is a need for reliable data about the future number of affected people.
Patients and methods: We searched the literature to identify epidemiological studies to obtain age-specific prevalence data of movement disorders. We combined the age-specific prevalence data with population projections for Europe, the United States, and Canada.
Results: Movement disorders will increase considerably between 2010 and 2050. The highest increase will be for dementia with Lewy bodies. In several countries, we project a near doubling of patients with PD.
Conclusions: There will be a strong increase in the number of people affected by most movement disorders between 2010 and 2050. This increase will mostly depend on the future aging of populations in terms of their age structure and future life expectancy.
Copyright © 2011 Movement Disorder Society.