Alzheimer’s deaths rose 26pc over first year of pandemic

DEATHS of Alzheimer’s patients increased by more than a quarter in the first year of the pandemic, a US study has found, as researchers suggest remote appointments were to blame.

The records of more than 27 million patients were analysed to see if there was a link between Covid rates and excess deaths among those with Alzheimer’s and related dementias. Alzheimer’s patients were at “higher risk of dying” in 2020 compared with 2019, “either directly of Covid-19 or because of premature death owing to disruptions in health care”, the authors found.

The researchers, from the Harvard Kennedy School in Boston and the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Centre in New Hampshire, used data from people on Medicare – a government health insurance programme – between January 2019 and December 2020. Participants were aged 65 or older and grouped into four categories: with or without Alzheimer’s, and with or without Alzheimer’s and living in a care home.

Mortality rates from March to December 2020 were compared with those in the same period in 2019. Deaths among patients without Alzheimer’s, when adjusted for other factors, were 12 per cent higher in 2020. For those with the disease the increase was 26 per cent.

The authors of the research, published in the JAMA Neurology journal, said changes in access to health care during the pandemic, “including fewer inpatient admissions and the transition of outpatient visits to telehealth platforms, may disproportionately affect older adults with [Alzheimer’s]”.

“It is not difficult to imagine how the combination of less effective (or absent) outpatient care and lower inpatient admission rates led to higher mortality,” they added.