Primary Prevention of Dementia: The Future of Population-Based Multidomain Lifestyle Interventions

Abstract

Dementia affects 46.8 million of the world’s population, and is projected to increase to 131.5 million by 2050 (1). Increasingly, with no available disease-modifying drug or cure for the disease, preventive strategies are being pursued to curb the worldwide epidemic. Accumulating evidence supports the importance of dementia prevention, with seven risk factors (diabetes mellitus, midlife obesity, midlife hypertension, physical inactivity, depression, smoking, and low education) estimated to contribute to 9.6 million cases, equivalent to a third of Alzheimer’s disease worldwide (2). The potential public health impact of prevention is huge as a 20% reduction per decade from 2010 in the prevalence of these risk factors would translate to a 16.3% (1.5 million) reduction in dementia prevalence by 2050.