title: The Burden of Tick-Borne Encephalitis in Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) for Slovenia.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) presents an increasing burden in many parts of Europe, Asian Russia, Siberia, Asian former USSR and Far East. Incidence can be considered as one way to express the burden. A more comprehensive measure concerns disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), better characterizing the full burden of TBE. TBE burden in DALYs has not yet been estimated, nor has it been specified by the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) studies.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  The purpose of the present study is to estimate the burden of TBE in Slovenia, expressed in DALYs, both from the population and individual perspectives. We discuss the impact of TBE burden on public health and potential strategies to reduce this burden in Slovenia.
  
  
  METHODS
  The burden of TBE is estimated by using the updated DALYs' methodology first introduced in the GBD project. The DALYs᾽ calculations are based on the health outcomes of the natural course of the disease being modelled. Corrections for under-reporting and under-ascertainment are applied. The impact of uncertainty in parameters in the model was assessed using sensitivity analyses.
  
  
  RESULTS
  From the population perspective, total DALYs amount to 3,450 (167.8 per 100,000 population), while from the individual perspective they amount to 3.1 per case in 2011. Notably, the consequences of TBE present a larger burden than TBE itself.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  TBE presents a relatively high burden expressed in DALYs compared with estimates for other infectious diseases from the GBD 2010 study for Slovenia. Raising awareness and increasing vaccination coverage are needed to reduce TBE and its consequences.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pharmacy, Unit of PharmacoEpidemiology & PharmacoEconomics (PE2), University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands.|Institute for Science in Healthy Aging & healthcaRE (SHARE), University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG), University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands.
authors.forename: Renata
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Šmit
authors.affiliation: Department of Pharmacy, Unit of PharmacoEpidemiology & PharmacoEconomics (PE2), University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands.|Institute for Science in Healthy Aging & healthcaRE (SHARE), University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG), University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands.|Department of Epidemiology, UMCG, University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands.
authors.forename: Maarten J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Postma
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D017281:Cost of Illness; D004675:Encephalitis, Tick-Borne / Q000453:epidemiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D008954:Models, Biological; D017524:Slovenia / Q000453:epidemiology; D055815:Young Adult