Don’t Forget The Past: An Analysis Of Dementia Risk Factors Around The World

Abstract

There are around 55.2 million people living with dementia right now, and it is the 7th leading cause of death. Some symptoms of dementia may include losing memory, declining in abilities to think, orientate, comprehend, make judgement, learn, and calculate [20]. Dementia’s impacts are not only just on the patient him/herself but also on the families, caregivers, and the society as a whole.

Currently, there is no definitive cure and preventative methods for dementia. How- ever, research papers have shown people may be able to reduce the risks of developing dementia by changing their lifestyle choices, such as limiting alcohol use and increasing physical activity [1]. Finding the most important risk factors of dementia is very important to its prevention.

In this study, we examined the trends of dementia prevalence and the impacts of various health factors (i.e. alcohol consumption, obesity, diabetes, hypertension, depression, hearing loss, head injury, smoking, high cholesterol, down syndrome, and low physical activity) on dementia in regions and countries at different developmental stages. Raw data from Global Burden of Disease (GBD) was collected, standardized by age and gender, and normalized. Various statistics models were implemented in order to provide quantitative and objective analysis of risk factors of dementia around the world.

According to our study, we found that dementia prevalence is on the rise in most countries in the world, especially in the under-developed and developing countries. Countries or regions with different socio-demographic index (SDI) have different risk factors and individual heterogeneity contributing to their own unique trends in dementia prevalence. This study concluded that obesity is a very significant risk factor in all countries and SDI regions. We also found that dementia prevalence is not a good predictor of itself, but with the inclusion of the risk factors, dementia prevalence can be predicted very accurately.