BOSTON: Despite an aging population, dementia cases may be leveling off in western Europe thanks to better education and living conditions and greater attention to vascular disease, say the authors of a new paper.
Current estimates of the number of dementia cases in western European countries are based on old studies from the 1980s, they note.
“These old studies support the idea of a continuing ‘dementia epidemic,’ but are now out of date because of changes in life expectancy, living conditions, and improvements in health care and lifestyle,” lead author Carol Brayne, MD.
To get a more up-to-date picture, she and her colleagues synthesized evidence from five large cohort studies from Sweden (Stockholm and Gothenburg), the Netherlands (Rotterdam), the UK (England), and Spain (Zaragoza) that have compared dementia occurrence over time.
Findings from four of the studies show nonsignificant changes in overall occurrence of dementia over the past 20 to 30 years, they report.