Background: Peripheral artery disease (PAD), the third leading cause of atherosclerotic vascular morbidity, affects approximately 202 million people worldwide, among whom more than two-thirds reside in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). For China, the largest developing country, little is known about the epidemiology of PAD. We aimed to estimate the prevalence of PAD and the number of affected people in China, establish the main risk factors for PAD and assess the number of people with PAD at the sub-national level.
Methods: We searched China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Wanfang, Chinese Biomedicine Literature Database (CBM-SinoMed), PubMed, Embase and Medline for population-based studies that have reported the prevalence of PAD in the general Chinese population from 1990 onwards. PAD was defined as an ankle-brachial index (ABI) lower than or equal to 0.90. We used a multilevel mixed-effects logistic regression to generate the gender- and age-specific prevalence of PAD, and a random-effects meta-analysis to pool the odds ratios (ORs) of major risk factors. United Nations population numbers were used to estimate and project the number of affected people from 2000 to 2020. Finally, we used the risk factors-based model to distribute the national number of people with PAD into different settings (urban and rural) and regions (East, Central and West) for the year 2010.
Results: Overall, 37 articles met all inclusion criteria and provided prevalence estimates, among which 14 also explored risk factors for PAD. The prevalence of PAD increased gradually by age until mid-60s, after which the increase accelerated. In males, the prevalence of PAD ranged from 2.81% (95% CI = 1.77-4.43) in those aged 25-29 years to 21.95% (95% CI = 15.39-30.31) in those 95-99 years old. In females, the PAD prevalence increased from 3.84% (95% CI = 2.44-5.98) in those aged 25-29 years to 27.95% (95% CI = 20.14-37.37) in those aged 95-99 years. The PAD prevalence was consistently higher in females than in males across all age groups. This difference was most significantly pronounced among the elderly, starting from 60 years. Between 2000 and 2020, the total number of Chinese people with PAD is expected to increase by 40%: from 29.44 million (95% CI = 22.51-38.62) in 2000 to 41.13 million (95% CI = 32.00-52.95) in 2020. Current smoking was the strongest risk factor for PAD, with a meta-odds ratio (OR) of 2.62 (95% CI = 1.44-4.76), followed by hypertension (1.94, 95% CI = 1.48-2.53) and diabetes (1.71, 95% CI = 1.45-2.01). In 2010, 15.18 million (95% CI = 11.74-19.67) people with PAD resided in the East China, 11.08 million (95% CI = 8.61-14.28) in the Central China and 8.65 million (95% CI = 6.71-11.16) in the West China. In addition, 24.20 million (95% CI = 18.82-31.16) people with PAD were living in rural areas, accounting for almost 70% of all PAD cases in China.
Conclusions: With rapid ageing in China, PAD has become a serious public health problem. More research and optimal interventions on PAD are required to better identify effective strategies for prevention and treatment of PAD in China.