ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Infectious Diseases: Epidemiology and Prevention
This article is part of the Research TopicMathematical Modelling and Data Analysis in Infectious DiseasesView all 10 articles
Global Burden and Forecast of Infectious Diseases Attributable to Drug Use: Evidence from GBD 2021
Provisionally accepted
- 1Chengdu University of Chinese Medicine, Cheng Du, China
- 2Hospital of Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Chengdu, China
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Background Drug use is a significant risk factor for infectious diseases, yet a comprehensive global assessment of this burden—encompassing trends, inequalities, and forecasts—is lacking, hindering progress towards World Health Organization (WHO)'s 2030 elimination targets. This study provides the first such analysis, leveraging the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2021 study to quantify the specific burden of infectious diseases attributable to drug use. Methods Using data from 204 countries and territories in the GBD 2021 study, we analyzed deaths and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) from HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and other infectious diseases (primarily acute hepatitis B and C) attributable to drug use, following the GBD risk attribution framework. Methods included trend analysis, health inequality assessment, driver decomposition, age-period-cohort modeling, and Auto-Regressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) forecasting to 2036. Results From 1990 to 2021, the global age-standardized mortality rate (ASMR) for HIV/AIDS and STIs attributable to drug use increased by 135%, peaking around 2005 before declining, while the ASMR for other infectious diseases decreased by 57%. Males aged 30–54 carried the highest burden. Health inequality analysis revealed a shift of HIV/AIDS and STIs toward high-Socio-demographic Index (SDI) countries. Epidemiological changes were the primary driver of burden trends. By 2036, the ASMR for HIV/AIDS and STIs is projected to decline by 82.9%. Conclusion Drug use is a critical, evolving driver of infectious disease burden. Stratified interventions and coordinated supply-demand-side governance are essential to mitigate this burden and achieve global health goals.
Keywords: Age-Period-Cohort analysis, Drug use, Forecasting, Global burden of disease, health inequalities, infectious diseases
Received: 16 Sep 2025; Accepted: 27 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Gong, Yao, Wang, Meng and Li. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Xueqing Gong
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