Dementia Rate Declining Steadily in the US; Educated People Less at Risk

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The dementia rates in the United States are falling steadily according to the Framingham Heart Study, which spans a period of around four decades. This positive development came even with the absence of medical breakthrough in treatment and vaccine.

The study, which was published on Feb. 10 in "The New England Journal of Medicine," also suggests that education could also have something to do with the decline, The New York Times reported.

"There are more studies suggesting that the risk is going down and we might have to rethink some of the projections of how big a problem dementia will be 30 years from now," said Dr. Kenneth Langa, a professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan.

Langa said that the results of the study only prove that even without the medical breakthrough, people can do something with regard to keeping the risk of dementia at bay.

According to the findings of the study, which involved more than 5,000 people who are aged 60 years and older monitored in different study periods starting in 1977, there was a steady decline in new dementia cases by about 20 percent every decade.

Furthermore, those people who were diagnosed more recently with dementia were older as compared to those in the 1970s. In this decade, for instance, people were found to have dementia when they were 85 years old while those in the 70s were found to have dementia at the age of 80.

Apart from improvement in dementia risk, those who had at least a high school diploma also had an improvement in cardiovascular health over the same period of four decades, reports USA Today.

"We find the more education the better," said Dr. Langa. Those people in 2010 were more educated by about one year of more education compared to those in 2000, which could mean that education may contribute to the decline in dementia.

According to the researchers, people who are more educated could have lower risk of developing the condition because of better economic opportunity that one can get out of education. This could translate to healthier habits and better access to medical care. Another possible reason is that learning could boost brain health.

On the other hand, those people who had college education did not fare as much. But, according to Dr. Sudha Seshadri, a neurologist at Boston University Medical Center who is also part of the Framingham Heart Study, this observation is inconclusive because there was a small number of college-educated people among the participants.

"Whether education is beneficial in itself or whether education is a marker for other things like poverty and unhealthy lifestyle, we didn't parse that out," said Dr. Seshadri.