Estimation of prevalence of autoimmune diseases in the United States using electronic health record data.
Level 4 - case-series / case-control
Retrospective cross-sectional electronic health record study
PubMed 39666393 · doi:10.1172/JCI178722
What was done
Researchers analyzed electronic health record (EHR) data collected from six large US medical systems between January 1, 2011, and June 1, 2022. They developed and applied a standardized software program to calculate prevalence estimates for individual and aggregate autoimmune diseases across age and sex groups in the US population.
What was found
Between 2011 and 2022, an estimated 4.6% of the US population (over 15 million people) were diagnosed with at least one autoimmune disease. Among those affected, 34% were diagnosed with more than one autoimmune condition. Females represented 63% of diagnosed individuals, reflecting nearly twice the likelihood of diagnosis compared to males. The analysis also identified the top 20 most prevalent autoimmune diseases stratified by sex and age, though individual disease rates were not detailed in the abstract.
Why it matters
This study provides a unified, multi-center EHR estimate of US autoimmune disease burden, establishing baseline aggregate prevalence and highlighting substantial autoimmune multimorbidity and female predominance.
Limits
The abstract does not report the total sample size analyzed across the six health systems or the specific prevalence numbers for the top 20 individual diseases. EHR-based prevalence estimates are susceptible to diagnostic miscoding, variations in billing practices, and healthcare-seeking bias, and data from six large medical systems may not fully represent uninsured or underserved US populations.
Cited by
- context Approximately 80% of autoimmune conditions occur in women.