Examine 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.

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

Females are extra like­ly to stay 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% to 7.0% over the 16-year span. The lower was larg­er amongst girls, down 3.9 per­cent­age factors, from 13.6% to 9.7% … the researchers cit­ed “develop­ing evi­dence” that age-adjust­ed demen­tia preva­lence has been declin­ing in devel­oped coun­tries, pos­si­bly because of ris­ing lev­els of edu­ca­tion, a reduc­tion in smok­ing and wager­ter deal with­ment of key automobile­dio­vas­cu­lar threat fac­tors equivalent to hypertension…

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

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

The Examine:

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edu­ca­tion, and a mea­positive of life­time earn­ings, utilizing information on 21,442 indi­vid­u­als aged 65 and outdated­er … We devel­oped a lon­gi­tu­di­nal, latent-vari­ready mod­el of cog­ni­tive sta­tus, which we esti­mat­ed utilizing the Markov Chain Monte Automobile­lo methodology … The age-adjust­ed preva­lence of demen­tia decreased from 12.2% in 2000 (95% CI, 11.7 to 12.7%) to eight.5% in 2016 (7.9 to 9.1%) within the 65+ pop­u­la­tion, a sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant decline of three.7 per­cent­age factors or 30.1%. Females are extra like­ly to stay 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 robust­ly. We noticed a sub­stan­tial enhance within the lev­el of edu­ca­tion between 2000 and 2016 within the sam­ple. This com­po­si­tion­al change can clarify, in a sta­tis­ti­cal sense, about 40% of the reduc­tion in demen­tia preva­lence amongst males and 20% amongst girls, the place­as com­po­si­tion­al modifications within the outdated­er pop­u­la­tion by age, race and eth­nic­i­ty, and automobile­dio­vas­cu­lar threat fac­tors mat­tered much less.

The Examine in Context: