World Alzheimer Report 2015: Revised Estimates Hint at Larger Epidemic (Alzforum):
“Alzheimer’s Disease International yesterday released its World Alzheimer Report 2015: The Global Impact of Dementia. This seventh annual report from the federation of Alzheimer associations updates 2009 estimates of the global incidence, prevalence, upcoming trends, and cost of dementia, finding that almost 47 million people now live with this group of diseases.
“We are looking at roughly a doubling in the numbers every 20 years,” said co-author Martin Prince, King’s College London, in an online television introduction to the publication. However, Prince added, “This trajectory of growth may be changed by efforts to do more to prevent the onset of dementia.”
In the ADI report, worldwide incidence estimates for dementia have risen to 9.9 million new cases each year, up from 7.7 million in the 2012 World Health Organization/ADI report, Dementia: A Public Health Priority. It also puts a dollar amount on the global cost of dementia—$818 billion dollars in 2015, up 35 percent from $604 billion in 2010. The authors estimate that will climb to $1 trillion in 2018 and $2 trillion by 2030.”
To learn more:
- Full report: Here
- Article: Solving the Brain Fitness Puzzle Is the Key to Self-Empowered Aging
- Key definitions: Dementia is a collective name for progressive degenerative brain syndromes which affect memory, thinking, behaviour and emotion. There are a large number of conditions which cause the symptoms of dementia, as a result of changes that happen in the brain and the ultimate loss of nerve cells (neurons). The most common causes are Alzheimer’s disease, vascular dementia, dementia with Lewy bodies and fronto-temporal dementia (including Pick’s disease).
