Increasing incidence of cirrhosis over the past 2 decades among children in Ontario, Canada

Introduction — We describe the incidence of cirrhosis in the general pediatric population.

Methods — This is a population-based study using health-care data from Ontario, Canada, between 1997 and 2017. Age-adjusted and sex-adjusted standardized incidence rates were described, and age-period-cohort modeling approach was used to estimate the independent effect of birth cohort.

Results — In total, 2,966 new diagnoses of cirrhosis among children were identified at a median age of 9 years. The incidence rate increased almost 4-fold over the study period (2.7/100,000 person-years in 1997 vs 10.6/100,000 person-years in 2017) with the highest increase seen in children younger than 1 year.

Discussion — In this first population-based study in children, the incidence of cirrhosis has increased dramatically over the past 2 decades.