How a healthier life is helping win the battle against dementia

THE risk of developing dementia is getting smaller every year because of medical advances and people taking better care of their health, a study has found.

Although the actual number of cases is rising as the elderly population increases, the chance of being diagnosed with diseases such as Alzheimer’s is falling by 2.7 per cent each year for the over-50s.

Research by University College London and the University of Liverpool suggests around 700,000 people – about 35,000 a year – will be spared dementia over the next two decades if progress made since 2002 is kept up.

At the start of the decade the chance of developing dementia for men was 14.3 per 1,000 people and 17 per 1,000 women. Today, the risk has fallen to 12.3 per 1,000 men and 14.2 for women.

Dr Sara Ahmadi-abhari, lead author, said: “The decline in age-specific incidence of dementia is good news for both the individual and for society.

“For the individual, dementia is shifted to later years in life. For society, it means the growth in numbers of people living with dementia is not as large as once anticipated.”

Around 800,000 people are living with dementia in Britain, according to the research based on the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, which has followed 18,000 people in their 50s since 2002.

That number will rise to 1.2 million by 2040, but crucially that increase is driven by the growing and ageing population. Without recent improvements in medicine and a shift to healthier lifestyles, the figure would have been around 1.9 million within 23 years, experts said. The finding was welcomed by dementia charities who said that it proved exercising and improving heart health could ward off the disease.

Dr James Pickett, Head of Research at Alzheimer’s Society, said: “The proportion of people developing dementia at any given age has decreased slightly.

“This might be due to improved cardiovascular health, or more education and physical activity, and shows that dementia doesn’t have to be an inevitable part of ageing.”

However, the charity warned that overall numbers were rising and called on researchers to continue to look for cures and ways to prevent the disease.

Dementia already costs Britain around £23billion a year but that will rise dramatically, the research warns. The authors of the study said there were policy and planning implications for the NHS and Department of Health as people were living longer and deaths from other causes, such as heart disease, continue to decline.

Dr Ahmadi-abhari, added: “Given the incidence in decline, the main driver for the increase in numbers with dementia is increasing life expectancy and an increase in the proportion of the population in the oldest age groups.

“The increase in numbers of people living with dementia is nonetheless substantial and has important policy implications for planning to meet health and social care needs. If public health efforts fail and the risk of developing dementia does not continue to decline, the growth in numbers of people living with dementia will be larger, reaching 1.9 million by 2040.”