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People in the 1970s develop less likely to develop dementia compared to someone in the same age decades ago, according to a study.
Dementia is a general term for “memory loss, language, problem solving and other thinking skills, which, according to Alzheimer’s associations, are serious enough to affect daily life.
Researchers at the University of Queensland analyzed data from more than 62,000 people over the age of 70 who were born from 1890 to 1948 to determine whether there was a difference in generation in prevalence.
What did the study find?
The analysis included data from 21,000 people from the USA, 32,000 people from Europe and almost 9,000 people from England, with the participants being divided into eight birth cohorts and six age groups.
Cohorts were divided into five blocks, with the earliest people born between 1890 and 1913 and the latest 1944-1948.
Dr. Sabrina Lenzen from the UQ Center for Health companies and economics said: “This enabled us to examine how the prevalence of dementia changes with age and generations and is taken into account at the same time when the surveys were carried out.”
She said that the results consistently showed that people who had recently been born had less dementia, including in the United States, where 25.1% of people aged 81 to 85 were born between 1890 and 1813, compared to 15.5% of the people born between 1939 and 1943.
“Education has improved a lot – especially for women if, for example, we are compared to the baby boomer generation,” she added.
Why is that?
Dr. Lenzen said it was probably an improvement in cardiovascular health, education, living conditions and access to health care that contributed to the results.
She said: “We have improvements in cardiovascular health, better control of blood pressure and cholesterol – all risk factors for dementia.
“We see this strong correlation between age and dementia, but I think it is really important to understand that it is not just the age that drives these onsets.”
From 2024, 14 “modifiable risk factors” were identified, which, according to the Lancet Commission on Dementia prevention, intervention, to prevent or delay dementia.
At a young age, education is an avoidable risk factor. In medium life, hearing loss, high LDL cholesterol, physical inactivity, smoking, high blood pressure, obesity and excessive alcohol consumption are associated with degenerative disorder (you will find the full list here).
In later life, social isolation, air pollution and visual loss were also associated with it.
The number of people who are diagnosed with dementia
While people are less likely to develop dementia than earlier generations, Dr. Lenzen that “if more people live longer, the total number of people diagnosed with dementia will grow”.
“We often see statistics that show that dementia prevalence rates are increasing – our study does not refute that,” she said.
“What we found was a statistically significant decline in people from newer birth cohorts with dementia.”
The study researchers demanded continuous investments in public health campaigns. “Some of the risk factors have improved, but we have found a shift in high obese rates and air pollution,” said Dr. Lenzen.
“We know that these are also related to dementia, so it is not sure that these trends continue.”
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