Status: 07.01.2022 02:38 a.m.
Smoking, obesity, high blood sugar, and low education – these are some of the factors that make you more at risk of dementia. If they are not addressed more intensely, the number of cases threatens to rise immensely, warn researchers.
The number of dementia cases worldwide could almost triple in the next three decades. At least that’s what a health study published in The Lancet Public Health predicts.
According to her, around 153 million people could live with dementia in 2050 – compared to 57 million in 2019. This is mainly due to the growth and aging of the population. The scientists expect a particularly high increase in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, among others, while Japan will record the lowest growth rates.
For Germany, the researchers forecast an increase of 65 percent, which would be below the Western European average.
Increasing life expectancy
The World Health Organization had already warned last year that the number of people with dementia would increase rapidly over the next ten years. One of the main reasons for this is the increasing life expectancy: with age, the risk of noncommunicable diseases and thus also of dementia increases. This generic term describes the symptoms of a whole series of mostly progressive diseases that affect the performance of the brain – Alzheimer’s dementia is one of the most common and well-known.
According to the WHO, dementia is currently the seventh leading cause of death worldwide and a leading cause of disability and the need for care in the elderly. Global costs are estimated at more than $ 1 trillion in 2019.
Four risk factors for dementia
The predictions that a team of international scientists have modeled for the regularly published “Global Burden of Disease” study appear all the more alarming. Specifically, the researchers made estimates of the prevalence of dementia for 195 countries and territories in the period from 2019 to 2050, including various dementia risk factors.
Looking at the effects of four dementia risk factors – smoking, obesity, high blood sugar, and low education – the study authors predict that improved access to education could result in six million fewer cases of dementia. On the other hand, there are almost seven million more cases associated with the predicted rates for obesity, high blood sugar and smoking. This makes preventive measures that minimize the influence of these risk factors all the more important, emphasizes epidemiologist and lead author Emma Nichols from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.