The contribution of leading diseases and risk factors to excess losses of healthy life in eastern Europe: burden of disease study

Table 2 10 leading risk factors for the European region, exposure variables, theoretical minima, and contributions to total disease burden in the European region (source: Table 1 and Figure 1 in Ezzati et al. ¹). See Table 1 in Ezzati et al. ¹ for disease outcomes and data sources.

Risk Factor	Exposure Variable	Theoretical Minimum	Contribution to European disease burden (%GBD)
High blood pressure	Level of systolic blood pressure	115 SD 6 mmHg	12.8%
Tobacco	Current levels of smoking impact ratio (indirect indicator of accumulated smoking risk based on excess lung cancer mortality); oral tobacco use prevalence	No tobacco use	12.3%
Alcohol	Current alcohol consumption volumes and patterns	No alcohol use ^b	10.1%
High cholesterol	Level of total blood cholesterol	3.8 SD 1 mmol/l (147 SD 39 mg/dl)	8.7%
High body mass index (BMI)	Body mass index, BMI (height over weight squared)	21 SD 1 kg/m²	7.8%
Low fruit and vegetable intake	Fruit and vegetable intake per day	600 g (SD 50 g) intake per day for adults	4.4%
Physical inactivity	Three categories of inactive, insufficiently active (<2.5 hours per week of moderate-intensity activity, or less than 4000 KJ/week), and sufficiently active. Activity in discretionary-time, work, and transport considered	All having at least 2.5 hours per week of moderate-intensity activity or equivalent (400 KJ/week)	3.5%
Illicit drugs	Use of amphetamine, cocaine, heroin or other opioids and intravenous drug use	No illicit drug use	1.6%
Lead	Current blood lead levels	0.016 μg/dl blood lead levels ^c	0.8%
Unsafe sex	Sex with an infected partner without any measures to prevent infection (represented as parameters of an HIV model)	No unsafe sex	0.7%

^a The resulting haemoglobin levels vary across regions and age-sex groups (from 11.66 g/dl in under-5 children in SEAR-D to >14.5 g/dl in adult males in developed countries) because the other risks for anaemia (e.g. malaria) vary.
^b Theoretical minimum for alcohol is zero, the global theoretical minimum. Specific sub-groups may have a non-zero theoretical minimum.
^c Theoretical minimum for lead is the blood lead levels expected at background exposure levels. Health effects were quantified for blood lead levels above 5 μg/dl where epidemiological studies have quantified hazards.

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