Dementia may not always be a threat it is now. Here’s why.

Joan Precision is worried about dementia. Her mother lived with Alzheimer’s disease for 14 years, the last seven in the residence in the field of memory care, and her mother’s grandfather also developed dementia.

“I am 100 percent convinced that it is in my future,” said 70 -year -old Mrs. Prerery, a retired lawyer in Thornton, Colo.

Last year, she spent almost all day with a neuropsychologist, undergoing an extensive assessment. The results indicate that her short-term memory was in order-what was considered “shocking and comforting”-and that she tested the average or higher in each cognitive category, but one.

It is not calmed down. “I saw how Alzheimer looked like,” she said about her mother’s long fall. “The memory of what she has gone through is deep for me.”

The prospect of dementia, which includes Alzheimer’s disease and many other cognitive disorders, so frightens the Americans this Recent research protrudes steep increases In cases in the next three decades, she drew great attention to the public.

The findings of scientists, published in January in Nature Medicine, even appeared as a joke in the weekend segment of the “Saturna Night Live” update.

“Dementia is a destructive state and is very related to the oldest age,” said Dr. Josef Coresh, director of the optimal Aging Institute at Nyu Langone Health and the senior author of the study. “Globe is getting ancient.”

Now the findings are questioned by other dementia researchers who claim that while growth is coming, they will be much smaller than predicted by Dr. Coresh and his co -authors.

Using data from about 15,000 Americans over 55 years of age, collected in four research clinics throughout the country from 1987 to 2020, Dr Coray’s team predicted the risk of dementia for life much higher than previous studies: 42 percent, although most of this risk did not appear only after 85 years of age.

Dr. Coresh said that the higher lifetime probably reflected the reaction of the study from a more diverse sample than previously researchers, and more cases of dementia identified on the basis of detailed questionnaires, regular phone calls, medical documentation and death actions.

Scientists applied their risk calculations to the US population and estimated that the number of people who will develop dementia each year, to about a million by 2060, from 514,000 in 2020.

Eric Stallard, an actuate and biodemography co -director of the research department aging at the University of Duke, read the study and thought that the team “seemed very competent in their analysis” individual risk.

But when it comes to projection, matters would double, which assumed that the incidence of dementia would remain stable over the next 40 years, “I don’t believe it,” said Stallar.

“The concept that the number of people with dementia will double in the next 25, 30 or 35 years due to the aging of the demographic growth, is common, is ubiquitous – and it is bad” – he added.

He and two other Duke researchers recently published Comment in Jamie Indicating that the dissemination of dementia for age in this country has been constantly falling for 40 years.

“If your risk is lower than the risk of parents, and this trend continues, you will not see the doubling or tripling of dementia that have been anticipated,” said Dr. Murala Doraiswama, director of the neurocognitive disorder program at Duke and co -author of the Jama article.

To make it clear, experts agree that the number of people with dementia will augment in the coming decades, simply because the disorder increases so rapidly with age, and the number of older adults in the United States will augment.

But Mr. Stallard estimates that the augment will be more than 10 to 25 percent until 2050. “It will still be a significant challenge for the healthcare system in the US,” he said.

The Duke group relied on its own long -term research of people over 65, with over 21,000 respondents in 1984 and about 16,000 in 2004, except for later data from the National Health and Retirement Study and the National Health and Aging Trends.

Their analysis showed that, for example, among 85 to 89-year-olds, the percentage with dementia was about 23 percent in a cohort born in 1905. At 10 years later, this number fell to about 18 percent.

Before the Americans born in 1935 reached the slow 1980s, about 11 percent had dementia; The projection for people born in 1945–1949 is currently about 8 percent.

For Dr. Coresh, whose main interest was the individual risk, the assumption that the declines have passed will continue in relation to the current rate “would be great, but it is quite hopeful, dramatic inheritance,” said We -mail.

Still in Another longitudinal examination About older adults in England and China, published in Nature Aging last year, “We also found these clear improvements in recently born cohorts,” said the main author, Dr. John Beard, medical epidemiologist at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University.

“You would expect an augment in the number of absolute people with dementia in the US will be less than we were afraid of,” said Dr. Beard.

What led to a decrease in dementia, also observed in several European countries? Frequently cited explanations include growing levels of education, reduction of smoking and better treatment of high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

. Lancet Commission In the case of dementia, intervention and care developed a list of 14 modifiable risk factors, including greater exploit of hearing aids and reduced air pollution, which can still lead to a larger decline.

However, the opposite can happen. Dr. Doraiswama noticed that earlier and more widespread tests augment the number of diagnoses of dementia or if the definition of dementia increases, the indicators will augment. Increasing life expectancy would have the same effect.

Obesity and diabetes, more common in recent decades, can lead to greater dementia, but significantly advertised fresh drugs that reduce them can take this trend-if people can get them.

“None of this is inevitable,” said Dr. Gill Livingston, a psychiatrist at the University College London, who runs the Lancet committee. “It depends on what we do.”

She noticed that public health policy makes a significant difference and “the USAs are in times when policy changes hugely.”

Dementia indicators, for example, can augment, “if people have less access to healthcare, so they treat blood pressure and high cholesterol treatment less often,” said Dr. Livingston.

Stopping Medicaid can lead to this result. Similarly, it can withdraw environmental policy, “if air pollution increases due to fossil fuels,” she added.

Scientists indicate that dementia affects some American populations much more than others. Older women and black people have a greater risk, along with those who carry the Apoe4 gene associated with Alzheimer’s disease.

Droraiswama said that health differences may mean that “wealthy people will see lower indicators of dementia” because of fresh drugs for diabetes and obesity. “People who cannot afford them and whose conditions are not well managed see that the rates will augment.”

A debate on how many older adults will develop dementia in the coming decades and how people, families, government and healthcare system should probably be continued.

Similarly, the fears of the Precise.

For now, he is enrolled in lifelong learning lessons, walks and yoga classes despite orthopedic problems, listens to podcasts and reads many stories and fiction. She and her husband take part in the theater in Novel York and Phish concerts on the west coast and will soon set off to London and Paris.

Despite this, its advanced directive contains many regulations on dementia. “I remain pessimist,” she said, noting that her mother was diagnosed at the age of 77. “I am seven years ancient before I meet her fate.”