Gaby
About 55 million people worldwide are living with dementia. But researchers at the University of Queensland in Australia say the outlook could be improving: the risk of developing dementia appears to fall with each successive generation.
What Did the Researchers Discover?
In the new study, a team led by economist Xiaoshuye Dou analyzed data from long-running health surveys in the U.S., Europe, and England. To make dementia assessments more comparable across surveys, the researchers used only variables that were consistently available in all datasets.
“For people born later, the likelihood of developing dementia was lower in all three regions, although the rate of decline varied. The trend was stronger among women than men,” the team wrote.
The researchers focused on participants aged 71 and older. They grouped participants into four-year age bands, as reported by Science Alert.
Younger cohorts had lower dementia prevalence. “For example, in the U.S. among people aged 81 to 85 who were born between 1890 and 1913, 25.1 percent had dementia; among those born between 1939 and 1943, the figure was 15.5 percent,” said study co-author Sabrina Lentz.
The results suggest that although global aging will likely increase the number of people with dementia, the share of people affected may decline over time.
The study’s authors wrote that this generational decline “has significant implications for healthcare planning, long-term care policies, and workforce demands” as populations age.
The findings were published in JAMA Network Open.
