A new epidemic
Scientists have found out how many people suffer from senile dementia
The number of carriers of Alzheimer's disease and other forms of senile dementia has more than doubled over the past quarter century. This conclusion was reached by Russian and foreign scientists who published an article in the journal Lancet Neurology (Global, regional, and national burden of Alzheimer's disease and other dementias, 1990-2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016).
"Speaking of Russia, we can say that today more than a million Russians suffer from senile dementia, according to data for 2016. Basically, these are people over 50 years old," says Vasily Vlasov, a professor at the Higher School of Economics and one of the authors of the publication.
Heart and vascular diseases, as well as strokes and various forms of senile dementia have become one of the main causes of death of people in the first World countries today, and one of the main items in the expenditures of the health services of these states.
According to current WHO estimates, approximately 75 million people on Earth will suffer from such problems by 2030, which is why today scientists are actively studying how these diseases develop and trying to find a way to reduce the likelihood of acquiring them in old age.
Vlasov and his colleagues, working within the framework of the Global Burden of Disease collaboration, conducted the first assessment of how the number of carriers of these diseases has changed over the past 25 years, using data collected by relevant ministries of 190 countries around the world.
Combining this information with the results of several hundred scientific studies, biologists have found that today about 44 million people suffer from Alzheimer's disease and other diseases associated with the development of senile dementia.
Statistics show that their number has more than doubled over the last quarter of a century – in 1990, the number of carriers of these problems was about 20 million people.
As a result, senile dementia rose to the fifth place in the general list of the main causes of death, second only to strokes, ischemia, obstructive pulmonary disease and heart attacks.
These changes primarily affected the elderly. The probability of developing dementia among them has increased several times, while it has hardly changed among young people. For this reason, the "average" chances of acquiring Alzheimer's disease have almost not changed, while the number of its carriers has doubled.
Interestingly, dementia turned out to be more of a "female" disease than a problem of the stronger sex. It affects 27 million representatives of the weaker sex and about 17 million men.
This is due, according to Vlasov and his colleagues, not only to the fact that women live longer on average, but also to differences in the work of their circulatory system, brain and other organs.
According to the authors of the report, all this suggests the need for the early development of drugs for Alzheimer's disease. Without them, doctors simply will not be able to stop this "epidemic of dementia", even if all the accompanying factors – obesity, poor nutrition and poor ecology – are eliminated.
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