Prevalence of Diagnosed Essential Tremor in the United States: An Administrative Claims-Based Study

Background: Essential tremor (ET) is one of the most common movement disorders. Previous estimates of ET prevalence vary due to multiple factors. This study estimated the prevalence of diagnosed ET.

Methods: The prevalence of diagnosed ET was estimated among adults with continuous enrollment in 2022 and ≥1 additional year of prior baseline enrollment in the Merative™ MarketScan^® Research Databases, a US administrative claims database. ET was defined as ≥2 ET claims within 12 months of one another during the 2016–2022 study period. The proportion of patients receiving treatment was defined as having a claim for possible medication for ET in 2022 among those with diagnosed ET who had an additional 6 months of follow-up following the first ET diagnosis claim. Age-standardized estimates of the number of US adults with diagnosed ET were calculated using 2024 US population census projections.

Results: The prevalence of diagnosed ET was 0.28% before age standardization, ranging from 0.06% (18–40 years) to 1.61% (≥75 years); 74% of patients overall received possible treatment. After standardization, prevalence was 0.42%; in 2024, 1.1 million US adults were estimated to have diagnosed ET. Estimates of the prevalence of diagnosed ET in the US were susceptible to the choice of case definition, nearly doubling (ie, 2.1 million US adults) with a more sensitive definition.

Discussion: ET affects a substantial proportion of the US adult population. Selecting appropriate case definitions and using methods such as standardization are critical for estimating valid and generalizable chronic condition prevalences with real-world data.

Highlights

This study found that 1.1 million US adults were estimated to have been diagnosed with essential tremor, with the sensitivity analyses yielding additional estimates. Estimating reliable and generalizable prevalences of diagnosed chronic conditions requires selection of appropriate case definitions and standardization to the general population.