As per an influential study, there is a possibility of Dementia rates witnessing a decline in the U.S, which further offers hope about some cases of the disease being preventable.
More than 5000 people were studied, and it was found that there was a 20 percent decline in the incidence of Dementia per decade on an average, since the year 1977. Findings have also reported a 29 percent decrease in Vascular Dementia per decade.
These results have been published in New England Journal of Medicine and highlight the fact that anything that is good for the heart is beneficial for the brain as well.
This new study was based on data from FHS or Framingham Heart Study, whose participants were continuously monitored for the occurrence of cognitive decline in dementia. This decrease was most pronounced with a kind of Dementia, the cause of which is a stroke.
Professor of Neurology, Sudha Seshadri, from Boston University’s School of Medicine, stated that currently, there aren’t any effective treatments for preventing or curing dementia.
She further added that effective prevention might inevitably diminish some percentage of the projected explosion in the number of sufferers, in next few decades.
Usually, FHS is a reliable data source, but the authors of the study cautioned that since the sample population was only of European ancestry, they might need further studies for extending findings to other populations.
However, this doesn’t mean that there would be a decrease in the no. of people with dementia soon because people are living longer and baby boomers are aging.
By 2025, the no. of people who are 65 or older with Alzheimer’s disease in the United States is estimated to reach 7.1 million, thereby bringing about a 40 percent increase from 5.1 million in 2015.
