BOSTON: New research suggests that people born after 1930 may have a lower risk of developing dementia than the generation before them, adding to evidence that the incidence of dementia may be declining.
That decline was not explained by age, but did seem to be related to improvements in heart health over time, the researchers found.
The study of nearly 1,000 elderly New Yorkers found that those born after 1930 had a lower risk of dementia than those born between 1916 and 1930.
In the older group, people developed dementia at a rate of 2.2 percent per year between 1993 and 2014 when they were in their 70s and beyond, said lead researcher Carol Derby, an associate professor of neurology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, in New York City.
In the younger group, that rate was just over 0.4 percent per year, Derby added.