The strengths of our study include a more comprehensive set of risk factors than any previous global or national analysis, consistent analyses in 1990, and 2010, which enables assessment of changes in risk factor burden, the incorporation of substantially more data for risk-factor exposure, improved methods to deal with missing and incomparable data, strong emphasis on comparability of methods related to exposure, disease outcomes, and effect sizes, and use of theoretical-minimum-risk exposure distribution as the consistent alternative exposure distribution with which current exposures are compared.
