Global, regional, and national burden of neonatal infectious diseases from 1990 to 2021.

Background: Neonatal infectious diseases are very common during the neonatal period, and severe neonatal infections such as sepsis, meningitis, pneumonia can be life-threatening. Despite significant advances in neonatal medicine, neonatal sepsis is still the third leading cause of neonatal mortality and accounts for nearly half of all deaths in children under five globally. However, comprehensive data on the incidence, disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), and trends of these diseases remain scarce. This study leverages the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) database to evaluate the global, regional, and national burdens of neonatal infectious diseases.

Methods: We extracted data from the GBD database, covering neonatal sepsis and other infectious diseases from 1990 to 2021, focusing on incidence and DALYs. We calculated the estimated annual percentage change (EAPC) to assess trends in incidence and DALYs and employed joinpoint regression to determine the annual percentage change (APC) and average APC (AAPC). The data were stratified by sex, age, socio-demographic index (SDI), region, and country.

Results: From 1990 to 2021, a global decline in both the incidence and DALYs rates of neonatal infectious diseases was observed [AAPC -0.71 (incidence), -0.70 (DALYs)]. Males and 0-6 days neonates had higher risk in neonatal infectious diseases. The majority of the disease burden was concentrated in countries with lower SDI values, and Africa had higher disease burden with lower SDI values.

Conclusions: The worldwide burden of neonatal infectious diseases has decreased over the past decades and is inversely related to SDI values. Continued efforts are needed to address these disparities and further reduce the impact of these diseases.