- Dementia numbers are increasing globally, but there is some evidence that incidence is declining.
- In order to maintain that decline, scientists need to know why it is happening.
- A global team of researchers has proposed that decreasing smoking rates and increasing education rates since the 1970s, particularly in high-income countries, could be behind the trend.
- They argue the link they found between smoking and education and the decline in dementia incidence, supports further public intervention over diabetes, high blood pressure, and obesity to further reduce dementia incidence.
Reduction in smoking and increases in education have been linked to reducing the incidence rate of dementia in some high-income countries.
Tackling other risk factors associated with dementia could be a way to ensure this decline continues, a group of researchers from Europe and the U.S. have said.
“There is a lot of interest around how to prevent dementia and we know many studies have found that dementia prevalence and incidence have declined over time. We thought it was important to look for studies examining changes in dementia rates and see whether we could link this with changes in dementia risk factors,” said first author Naaheed Mukadam, MD, PhD, professor of psychiatry at University College London, U.K. and consultant in the Mental Health Liaison Team at University College London Hospital.
“This could help guide public policy to reduce dementia rates further in the future,” he told Medical News Today.
The results of the study are published in The Lancet Public Health.
In 2020, some of these researchers had estimated that 40% of dementia cases were associated with 12 risk factors, which could potentially be minimized as part of the Lancet’s commission on dementia prevention, intervention, and care.
These were identified as:
- less education
- high blood pressure
- hearing impairment
- smoking
- obesity
- depression
- physical inactivity
- diabetes
- low social contact
- excessive alcohol…
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