DALLAS: Dementia may not be the fast-growing epidemic it has been painted to be, according to experts who say that numbers of sufferers are stabilising in some countries.
The data usually cited for the proportion of people with dementia and the numbers of new cases being diagnosed are from the 1980s and now out of date, say experts from Cambridge University in the UK, Stockholm, Madrid, Bonn and Gothenburg. Yet these estimates are being used to plan care by health and social care bodies.
“These old studies support the idea of a continuing ‘dementia epidemic’, but are now out of date because of changes in life expectancy, living conditions and improvements in health care and lifestyle,” said lead author Carol Brayne, professor of public health medicine at the Cambridge Institute of Public Health…