Dementia cases expected to soar by 2060, UMMC researchers say
Published on Tuesday, January 21, 2025
By: Danny Barrett Jr., dlbarrett@umc.edu
About a million Americans per year are expected to develop dementia by 2060, a rate that’s about double today’s known patient load, according to a revealing new study co-authored by researchers at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.
After age 55, people have about a four in 10 chance of showing signs of the condition, if they live long enough. Despite that expected trend, the onset of the debilitating cognitive condition can still be slowed down with lifestyle changes in midlife, researchers noted.
“Our study findings are indeed sobering, with a 42 percent lifetime risk of developing dementia after age 55,” said Dr. Thomas H. Mosley, director of The Memory Impairment and Neurodegenerative Dementia (MIND) Center at UMMC and the Robbie and Dudley Hughes MIND Center Chair. “The good news is that our work at The MIND Center and other researchers have identified several medical and lifestyle factors that may help to slow or prevent dementia.”
Mosley said some of those steps include managing high blood pressure and cholesterol levels, controlling diabetes, quitting smoking, increasing physical activity and managing obesity, as well as stroke prevention, treatment for hearing loss and encouraging older adults to stay cognitively and socially engaged.
“It’s never too late to start taking steps to lessen your risk for dementia, and the earlier in life you start, the larger the reduction in risk will be,” he said.
The findings wrapped up an analysis of data from the long-running Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities, or ARIC, Study, funded by the National Institutes of Health. The MIND Center aims to find new ways to slow or prevent dementia, the most common type of which is Alzheimer’s disease. Mosley and Dr. Gwen Windham, director of the Neuro-Epidemiology Core at the center, co-authored the study, published in Nature Medicine. The overall research team involved dozens of researchers at 10 institutions.
About 27 percent of the ARIC study’s 15,000 participants across four states were Black and primarily from Jackson, which helps national and local researchers’ efforts studying dementia.
“We’ve known for a long time that dementia poses a substantial public health burden,” Windham said. “This drives our research efforts to identify early risk factors and contribute to the development of interventions and medications to preserve brain function and promote healthy aging.”
Previous studies showed about 6 million Americans have dementia, with about 14% of men and 23% of women developing forms of dementia during their life. The ARIC study has tracked heart health and cognitive function in its study pool since the late 1980s. In 2010, Mosley and others began the ARIC Neurocognitive Study, which produced this week’s findings and aims to study how the brain ages.
Only 4% of those studied developed dementia between 55 and 75 years old, said by researchers to be a key window for protecting brain health. The risk for dementia jumps to 20% by age 85 and 42% by 95.
Risks after 55 were 35% for men and 48% for women, researchers noted, citing a longer life expectancy in women for the difference. Black Americans studied had a slightly higher risk, at 44%, than white participants, at 41%.
“These updated numbers, derived using information from a large sample of Mississippi residents, will be critical for understanding the impact on people and resources, for developing preventive and treatment services, and for allocating resources to serve people at risk or who are affected by this devastating condition,” Windham said.