On 26 November, researchers published a detailed analysis of the global prevalence, mortality and overall burden of dementia in the journal The Lancet Neurology.
The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors (GDB) study is unprecedented in its scope and constitutes an update of a previous review that covered the years from 1980 to 2015. The new study reports on GBD methods and incorporates information on dementia from vital registration systems, published research, health-service encounters on deaths, excess mortality, prevalence as well as incidence throughout 195 countries and territories from 1990 to 2016.
The research stresses that there has not only been an increase of the number of people who lived with dementia from 1990 to 2016, by 117% (20.2 to 43.8 million), but also that these resulted in overall 28.2 million disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs). Furthermore, the authors concluded that strikingly 6.4 million of these DALYs (a combination of years of life lost and years lived with disability) could be judged to have a causal link to modifiable GDB risk factors such as the Body Mass Index, smoking and consumption of too much sugar-sweetened beverages as well as high fasting plasma glucose.
The paper, including detailed information on the findings but also limitations, is available as open access publication here: https://doi.org/10.1016/S1474-4422(18)30403-4