Dementia is poised to take off as the world ages, and the burden will be heavier in unexpected places
Katie Peek
Katie Peek
This article was produced in partnership with the Davos Alzheimer’s Collaborative by Scientific American Custom Media, a division separate from the magazine’s board of editors.
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By 2050 more than 150 million people worldwide will suffer from some kind of dementia. (Today that number is more like 50 million.) The increase has two major drivers—in some regions, such as sub-Saharan Africa, the wave comes from population growth. In others, such as China and East Asia, dementia is expected to increase as the population ages. But everywhere, researchers write, “growth in the number of individuals living with dementia underscores the need for public-health planning efforts and policy.”
The data here track general dementia instead of Alzheimer’s specifically, in part because dementia is more consistently diagnosed worldwide. For the most part, Alzheimer’s increases wherever dementia does. Typically, Alzheimer’s accounts for more than half of all dementia cases.
Source: Alzheimer’s Disease and Other Dementias, Mayo Clinic, 2020
Here (below) is where researchers expect the most cases of dementia to emerge worldwide by 2050. The vertical height of each region represents the number of cases in that region—the higher they move, the more people there are living with dementia there.
Source: E. Nichols et al., The Lancet Public Health, 7, e105–E125 (2022)
This article is part of The New Age of Alzheimer’s, a special report on the advances fueling hope for ending this devastating disease.
Learn more here about the innovation ecosystem that Davos Alzheimer’s Collaborative is building to speed breakthroughs and end Alzheimer’s disease. Explore the transforming landscape of Alzheimer’s in this special report.
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