Burden of disease resulting from chronic mountain sickness among young Chinese male immigrants in Tibet

BMC Public Health

Research Article

Xiaoxiao Li¹  Tao Pei²  Yuqi Gao²  Haiyan You²  Linlin Zhou²  Yan Liu³  Fasheng Tao⁴  Haotong Xu⁵ 

[1] Department of Health Service, College of High Altitude Military Medicine, Third Military Medical University, 30 Gaotanyan Street, Shapingba District, 400038, Chongqing, P.R. China;Beijing Long March Scientific and Technical Information Institute, 100076, Beijing, P.R. China;Key Laboratory of High Altitude Medicine, Ministry of Education, Third Military Medical University, 400038, Chongqing, P.R. China;Key Laboratory of High Altitude Medicine, PLA, 400038, Chongqing, P.R. China;Department of Health Service, College of High Altitude Military Medicine, Third Military Medical University, 30 Gaotanyan Street, Shapingba District, 400038, Chongqing, P.R. China;Key Laboratory of High Altitude Medicine, Ministry of Education, Third Military Medical University, 400038, Chongqing, P.R. China;Key Laboratory of High Altitude Medicine, PLA, 400038, Chongqing, P.R. China;Department of Health Service, Ngari Military Subdistrict, 859000, Tibet, P.R. China;Department of Health Service, Urumqi General Hospital of Lanzhou Military District, 830000, Urumqi, Xinjiang, P.R. China;Department of Radiology, Nanchong Central Hospital of North Sichuan Medical College, 637000, Nanchong, Sichuan, P.R. China;

关键词: chronic mountain sickness;    burden of disease;    disability-adjusted life years;    disability weight;    immigrant;    high altitude;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2458-12-401

 received in 2011-08-17, accepted in 2012-06-06,  发布年份 2012

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundIn young Chinese men of the highland immigrant population, chronic mountain sickness (CMS) is a major public health problem. The aim of this study was to measure the disease burden of CMS in this population.MethodsWe used disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) to estimate the disease burden of CMS. Disability weights were derived using the person trade-off methodology. CMS diagnoses, symptom severity, and individual characteristics were obtained from surveys collected in Tibet in 2009 and 2010. The DALYs of individual patients and the DALYs/1,000 were calculated.ResultsDisability weights were obtained for 21 CMS health stages. The results of the analyses of the two surveys were consistent with each other. At different altitudes, the CMS rates ranged from 2.1-37.4%; the individual DALYs of patients ranged from 0.13-0.33, and the DALYs/1,000 ranged from 3.60-52.78. The age, highland service years, blood pressure, heart rate, smoking rate, and proportion of the sample working in engineering or construction were significantly higher in the CMS group than in the non-CMS group (p < 0.05). These variables were also positively associated with the individual DALYs (p < 0.05). Among the symptoms, headaches caused the largest proportion of DALYs.ConclusionThe results show that CMS imposes a considerable burden on Chinese immigrants to Tibet. Immigrants with characteristics such as a higher residential altitude, more advanced age, longer highland service years, being a smoker, and working in engineering or construction were more likely to develop CMS and to increase the disease burden. Higher blood pressure and heart rate as a result of CMS were also positively associated with the disease burden. The authorities should pay attention to the highland disease burden and support the development and application of DALYs studies of CMS and other highland diseases.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Li et al. 2012. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.