Disease burden of rheumatic diseases in India: COPCORD perspective

Abstract

The maiden WHO ILAR COPCORD (community oriented program for control of rheumatic diseases) Bhigwan (1996–2014) demonstrated that musculoskeletal (MSK) pain was the commonest self-reported ailment in the community, soft tissue rheumatism, ill-defined MSK symptoms and osteoarthritis (OA) were the predominant disorders and about 10% cases suffered from inflammatory arthritis. The burden of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) was high with point prevalence of 0.7%. Bone and joint decade (BJD) India conducted several standardized and uniform surveys (2004–2010) all over India and collected data from over 55,000 persons at 12 sites. The pooled age sex adjusted (India census population 2001) prevalence reported by the recent surveys was – RA (0.34), OA knees (3.34), undifferentiated inflammatory arthritis (0.22), Spondyloarthritis (0.23), ankylosing spondylitis (0.03), psoriatic arthritis (0.01) soft tissue rheumatism (1.39), gout (0.05) lupus (0.01); prevalence percent in parenthesis. Several forms of collagen vascular disorders and vasculitis are described in hospital based case series. Musculoskeletal infections including tuberculosis remain an important clinical burden. The 2006 India Chikungunya epidemic has put an additional burden of chronic MSK pain and arthritis. The recently launched national health programs pertaining to non-communicable diseases, rural and women health does not even mention rheumatic diseases thus there is urgent need to study the burden of rheumatic diseases and its impact on society.