Research finds sharp lower (almost one-third) within the prevalence of dementia amongst these 65+ in the USA

Demen­tia plum­mets by near­ly one-third among U.S. seniors, RAND says (UPI):

The preva­lence of demen­tia within the Unit­ed States is declin­ing amongst peo­ple over age 65, falling dra­mat­i­cal­ly from 2000 to 2016, a RAND Corp. research says.

Nation­vast, the age-adjust­ed preva­lence of demen­tia fell to eight.5{176442ad05d5a8fbac15c968b5ffe24dcff61216e21a5719c28df09c1c08902d} of peo­ple over age 65 in 2016, down by close to­ly one-third from 12.2{176442ad05d5a8fbac15c968b5ffe24dcff61216e21a5719c28df09c1c08902d} of peo­ple over age 65 in 2000, accord­ing to the researchers.

Females are extra like­ly to dwell with demen­tia, however the intercourse dif­fer­ence has nar­rowed, the research discovered.

Amongst males, the preva­lence of demen­tia fell by 3.2 per­cent­age factors, from 10.2{176442ad05d5a8fbac15c968b5ffe24dcff61216e21a5719c28df09c1c08902d} to 7.0{176442ad05d5a8fbac15c968b5ffe24dcff61216e21a5719c28df09c1c08902d} over the 16-year span. The lower was larg­er amongst girls, down 3.9 per­cent­age factors, from 13.6{176442ad05d5a8fbac15c968b5ffe24dcff61216e21a5719c28df09c1c08902d} to 9.7{176442ad05d5a8fbac15c968b5ffe24dcff61216e21a5719c28df09c1c08902d} … the researchers cit­ed “develop­ing evi­dence” that age-adjust­ed demen­tia preva­lence has been declin­ing in devel­oped coun­tries, pos­si­bly attributable to ris­ing lev­els of edu­ca­tion, a reduc­tion in smok­ing and wager­ter deal with­ment of key automobile­dio­vas­cu­lar danger fac­tors corresponding to hypertension…

(Péter Hudomi­et, the research’s lead creator) mentioned it’s additionally pos­si­ble that, giv­en numer­ous stud­ies being launched on steps to take to keep away from demen­tia, a few of the decline could also be attrib­uted to peo­ple heed­ing such recommendation.

“It is usually plau­si­ble that oth­er behav­ior fac­tors, corresponding to smok­ing [ces­sa­tion], cog­ni­tive activ­i­ties, social activ­i­ties, and so forth., performed a job,” he mentioned.

The Research:

Trends in inequal­i­ties in the preva­lence of demen­tia in the Unit­ed States (PNAS). From the Summary:

• This paper presents esti­mates of the preva­lence of demen­tia within the Unit­ed States from 2000 to 2016 by age, intercourse, race and eth­nic­i­ty, edu­ca­tion, and a mea­certain of life­time earn­ings, utilizing knowledge on 21,442 indi­vid­u­als aged 65 and outdated­er … We devel­oped a lon­gi­tu­di­nal, latent-vari­in a position mod­el of cog­ni­tive sta­tus, which we esti­mat­ed utilizing the Markov Chain Monte Automobile­lo technique … The age-adjust­ed preva­lence of demen­tia decreased from 12.2{176442ad05d5a8fbac15c968b5ffe24dcff61216e21a5719c28df09c1c08902d} in 2000 (95{176442ad05d5a8fbac15c968b5ffe24dcff61216e21a5719c28df09c1c08902d} CI, 11.7 to 12.7{176442ad05d5a8fbac15c968b5ffe24dcff61216e21a5719c28df09c1c08902d}) to eight.5{176442ad05d5a8fbac15c968b5ffe24dcff61216e21a5719c28df09c1c08902d} in 2016 (7.9 to 9.1{176442ad05d5a8fbac15c968b5ffe24dcff61216e21a5719c28df09c1c08902d}) within the 65+ pop­u­la­tion, a sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant decline of three.7 per­cent­age factors or 30.1{176442ad05d5a8fbac15c968b5ffe24dcff61216e21a5719c28df09c1c08902d}. Females are extra like­ly to dwell with demen­tia, however the intercourse dif­fer­ence has nar­rowed. Within the male sub­sam­ple, we discovered a reduc­tion in inequal­i­ties throughout edu­ca­tion, earn­ings, and racial and eth­nic teams; amongst females, these inequal­i­ties additionally declined, however much less sturdy­ly. We noticed a sub­stan­tial improve within the lev­el of edu­ca­tion between 2000 and 2016 within the sam­ple. This com­po­si­tion­al change can clarify, in a sta­tis­ti­cal sense, about 40{176442ad05d5a8fbac15c968b5ffe24dcff61216e21a5719c28df09c1c08902d} of the reduc­tion in demen­tia preva­lence amongst males and 20{176442ad05d5a8fbac15c968b5ffe24dcff61216e21a5719c28df09c1c08902d} amongst girls, the place­as com­po­si­tion­al adjustments within the outdated­er pop­u­la­tion by age, race and eth­nic­i­ty, and automobile­dio­vas­cu­lar danger fac­tors mat­tered much less.

The Research in Context: