Demen cases are roasting faster in China than the rest of the world

Dementia increases faster in China than anywhere else in the world, with cases that are more than quadrupling in the country in the last few decades.

Daoying Geng at Fudan University in China and her Colugues analysis dementia rates in 204 countries and regions surround the world between 1990 and 2021. They used a World Health Organization Database to collect information on dementia deaths and cases in people aged 40 years and older, focusing on Alzhemian’s disease and other forms of dementia, such as vascular dementia and rehearsal dum Lobe Dentia.

The researchers found that the number of people with dementia worldwide more than during this period, from nearly 22 million in 1990 to close to 57 million by 2021. 4 million to almost millions at the same time.

Further analysis revealed that growth was the most important population scopes. Birth rats in China spiked in the 1950s. “So these people are getting older today – they are now in the 70s, which is the highest risk group for dementia,” says Xi Chen at Yale University, who was not involved in the study. “Many countries have baby boomers, but not as wide cohort as China’s baby boomers. So it’s the hand.”

The team identified three other important factors that contributed to China’s increasing dementia rates. The first, smoking, affects almost exclusively men, as only 2 percent of women in China smoke cigarettes, while about half of all men do. This is in sharp contrast to richer countries such as the United States and the UK, where smoking prices have steadily fallen, says Chen.

A Western trend that China has repeated is a leap in the amount of diabetes and obesity, especially in the last few decades, both of which are risk factors for dementia. This is probably because people in China adopt a more Western diet with fats and calories, Chen says. He believes that dementia prices in China will eventually take them in the US or Britain, as younger generations tend to smoke less than the elderly. But the condition will still have a huge impact on China in the meantime.

“Dementia is one of the most expensive diseases in the world. It requires a lot of care and treatment,” says Chen. “And with regard to an aging population, China is still the big one in the world. There are fewer young people taking care of a larger cohort of the elderly with dementia. So these are all challenges.”