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by Waterluvian 24 days ago
Whenever I look up diseases and it reports a statistic such as "3-5%" I often feel like either I must not be interpreting it correctly, or it is so region-biased as to not be useful for how I'm consuming the data. Because it's hard to reconcile that apparently in the ballpark of 1 in 20 people have this?
2 comments
somenameforme 24 days ago
It seems extremely common as people age. Your body just starts to break down as we get older and this is one, amongst many, ways that this manifests. A quick search suggests it shows up in about 50% of people over 70. [1]

[1] - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11879357/

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Eddy_Viscosity2 24 days ago
Is is a case that 1 in 20 people have this, or more like 1 in 20 will eventually get this?
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somenameforme 24 days ago
It's not going to just affect 70 year olds. It's going to be a gradual descent downward. So just making up some numbers perhaps it's 40% or whatever of 60 year olds, 30% of 50 year olds, and so on. And then aggregated out across the population it's going to be a relatively high number, especially as fertility issues drive the average age ever higher.

Eep, just looked up the exact figure and yeah the median age is now just about 40. So if something affects 10% of people over 40 then it'd affect 5% of all people. So you can bring my made up numbers above way down, and still end up with 5%.

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Melatonic 24 days ago
Lot of these are a spectrum. 3 to 5% might have a mild form that's aggravated by super spicy food or something but otherwise not very noticeable.

And then maybe a percentage of those people have a more debilitating version ?

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