DEMENTIA

Washington Post - New cases of dementia will double by 2060, when 1 million U.S. adults are projected to develop the memory-robbing condition each year, according to a sobering new study published Monday in the journal Nature Medicine.

The new analysis shows that the risk a person faces over their lifetime is higher than some previous estimates: After age 55, 4 in 10 adults are likely to develop some form of dementia. That’s in part because the new analysis is based on decades of close follow-up, including regular cognitive assessments, of a racially diverse group of people — a quarter of whom were Black and face an increased risk of dementia.

“If you start at age 55 and go forward until your 95th birthday, there are two options: You die before dementia, or you get to dementia before death,” said Josef Coresh, founding director of the Optimal Aging Institute at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine. From age 55 to 75, he noted, the risk of developing dementia is only about 4 percent. That increases substantially over the next two decades, particularly after people’s 85th birthdays....

Theo Vos, an epidemiologist and emeritus professor at the University of Washington who was not involved in the study, said that dementia is a difficult condition to consistently measure, in part because norms around listing it as the cause of death have varied by country and changed over time. There is also variability in the criteria and tests used to deem someone as having dementia...

What should give people some hope is that there is increasing evidence that this fate isn’t written in stone. Research commissioned by medical journal the Lancet last year found that 45 percent of cases of dementia globally are potentially preventable. Managing the risk factors that contribute to heart disease, including controlling and preventing high blood pressure, high cholesterol, obesity and diabetes, can also help protect against dementia. Treating hearing loss and avoiding social isolation can be protective. Avoiding smoking and excessive alcohol consumption can also reduce the risk.