Dementia risk factors associated with cardiovascular health may have increased over time compared to factors such as smoking and having less education, finds a new study led by UCL researchers. The study, published in The Lancet Public Health , explored how the prevalence of dementia risk factors had changed over time and how this could impact rates of dementia in the future. It is estimated that there are currently 944,000 people living with dementia in the UK and 52% of the UK public - 34.
5 million - know someone who has been diagnosed with a form of the disease. It is one of the nation's biggest killers and has been the leading cause of death in women in the UK since 2011. There has been increasing interest in potentially modifiable risk factors, as eliminating these could theoretically prevent around 40% of dementia cases, according to research led by UCL academics.
* For the new study, the researchers analyzed 27 papers, involving people with dementia across the globe with data collected between 1947 and 2015, and the latest paper published in 2020. They extracted data from each paper about dementia risk factors and calculated what proportion of dementia cases were attributable to each one, over time. Dementia usually develops because of a combination of genetic and environmental factors, including hypertension, obesity, diabetes, education and smoking.
The team found that having less education and smoking had become less common over time and was associated with a decline.
