More than a headache

Alex Eben Meyer

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More than half of Americans suffer from a condition affecting the nervous system, according to a new study led by Yale researcher and neurologist John Ney. 
Ney and his colleagues found that 180 million Americans—54 percent of the total population—had at least one nervous system condition in 2021. Overall, they examined 36 disorders, including migraine headache, ADHD, traumatic brain injury, autism, stroke, Parkinson’s disease, and Alzheimer’s disease.

The most common were tension headache, which affects nearly 122 million Americans, and migraine headache, which afflicts more than 57 million. Other common nervous system diseases were diabetic neuropathy (17 million), stroke (6 million), and Alzheimer’s and similar diseases (nearly 5 million). Ney said he and his colleagues were surprised by the numbers, which were much larger than they’d expected. “There’s a huge, huge burden of disease here,” he says. 

The study, published in JAMA Neurology, is the first to look at such a broad range of nervous system disorders in the United States. Researchers examined data from an enormous 2021 study (more than 11,000 collaborators in more than 160 countries) that looked at the burden of disease across the globe. The prevalence of conditions affecting the nervous system was higher in the US than in any other country. The global prevalence of diseases affecting the nervous system is 43 percent, 11 percent lower than the US. 

There are likely several reasons for this, Ney says. Americans may be more aware of these conditions, and so more likely to seek treatment. But, somewhat paradoxically, because the US health system is so fragmented, with millions of uninsured and underinsured people, there tends to be less preventative care than recommended; as a result, many conditions may not be caught as early here, leading to worse outcomes for many American patients. 

In addition to doing research, Ney sees patients. A headache specialist, he says he constantly sees how even relatively mild neurological disorders can have harmful effects. “If we’re focusing just on death alone, we’re missing a big part of the picture,” he says. “Even something like migraine headaches can be tremendously disabling, and can have a large effect on economic output.”