Background: Incidence is one of the most important epidemiologic indices in surveillance. However, determining incidence is complex and requires time-consuming cohort studies or registries with date of diagnosis. Estimating incidence from prevalence using mathematical relationships may facilitate surveillance efforts. The aim of this study was to examine whether a partial differential equation (PDE) can be used to estimate diabetes incidence from prevalence in youth.
Methods: We used age-, sex-, and race/ethnicity-specific estimates of prevalence in 2001 and 2009 as reported in the SEARCH for Diabetes in Youth study. Using these data, a PDE was applied to estimate the average incidence rates of type 1 and type 2 diabetes for the period between 2001 and 2009. Estimates were compared to annual incidence rates observed in SEARCH. Precision of the estimates was evaluated using 95% bootstrap confidence intervals.
Results: Despite the long period between prevalence measures, the estimated average incidence rates mirror the average of the observed annual incidence rates. Absolute values of the age-standardized sex- and type-specific mean relative errors are below 8%.
Conclusions: Incidence of diabetes can be accurately estimated from prevalence. Since only cross-sectional prevalence data is required, employing this methodology in future studies may result in considerable cost savings.
Keywords: Adolescents; Children; Epidemiology; Illness-death-model; Surveillance; Type 1 diabetes; Type 2 diabetes.
© 2023. The Author(s).