Dementia: 9 million elderly Indians have dementia: Study | India News – Times of India

MUMBAI: A pan-India study has found that dementia is prevalent among an estimated 7.4% of the country’s elderly people, which means 8.8 million individuals aged 60 years and older suffer from the debilitating ailment that affects memory and cognitive function.
This figure is notably higher than previous estimates, which had put the prevalence at 3.7 million, and underscores the pressing need for better care and support for those living with the condition. The prevalence of dementia in J&K is the highest in the country at 11%. While most of the samples were collected from Kashmir, experts believe there is scope for more detailed study to gauge if the region’s decades-long political turbulence had a role.

Maharashtra has been identified as one of 11 states where dementia prevalence is higher than the national average. It is 7.6% in the state, with researchers projecting that individuals living with the condition in the state will rise from nearly a million to 1.8 million by 2036.
The study, led by researchers from University of Southern California and AIIMS-Delhi, in collaboration with 18 other institutes, including Mumbai’s JJ Hospital, found wide variations in the presence of dementia among different states.
Dementia was found to be almost double among women (9%) than men (5.8%), which experts have linked with differences in education and early life nutrition. Prevalence was also higher in rural areas at 8.4% than in urban areas (5.3%), underlining the urgent need to scale up diagnosis in rural health facilities.

Further, lower education was associated with a greater risk of dementia. The estimated prevalence was 10% in those with no education at all, compared to 4.5% in those who had primary level education and 1.5% in those who went to Class VIII and above.
“Different levels of education across states could also contribute to cross-state differences in various dementia risk factors, like under-nutrition and exposure to indoor air pollution,” the researchers noted, calling for more localised policies to tackle the disorder.
“This is the largest cognitive ageing study in the world where globally-used scientific tools have been deployed to show that dementia affects nearly all regions, and that India needs to double down on empowering all health systems to tackle it,” said Dr Aparajit Dey, former project lead with the department of geriatric medicine at AIIMS-Delhi.