A systematic review of the quality of studies on dementia prevalence in Italy.

Gianluca Bruti,Sandro Sorbi,Michele Mancini,Alessandro Bitossi,Marzia Baldereschi,Elisabetta Cavallucci

doi:10.1186/s12913-016-1741-7

Gianluca Bruti, Sandro Sorbi + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-016-1741-7

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Abstract

BackgroundDementia, including Alzheimer’s disease (AD), is one of the most burdensome medical conditions. In order to better understand the epidemiology of dementia in Italy, we conducted a systematic search of studies published between 1980 and April 2014 investigating the prevalence of dementia and AD in Italy and then evaluated the quality of the selected studies.MethodsA systematic search was performed using PubMed/Medline and Embase to identify Italian population-based studies on the prevalence of dementia among people aged ≥60 years. The quality of the studies was scored according to Alzheimer’s Disease International (ADI) criteria.ResultsSixteen articles on the prevalence of dementia and AD in Italy were eligible and 75 % of them were published before the year 2000. Only one study was a national survey, whereas most of the studies were locally based (Northern Italy and Tuscany). Overall, the 16 studies were attributed a mean ADI quality score of 7.6 (median 7.75).ConclusionsAvailable studies on the prevalence of dementia and AD in Italy are generally old, of weak quality, and do not include all regions of Italy. The important limitations of the few eligible studies included in our analysis, mostly related to their heterogeneous design, make our systematic review difficult to interpret from an epidemiologic point of view. Full implementation of a Dementia National Plan is highly needed to better understand the epidemiology of the disease and monitor dementia patients.

Highlights

Dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease (AD), is one of the most burdensome medical conditions
What is known about the epidemiology of dementia in Italy comes from prevalence data which typically have been generated from studies that may be inconsistent
We estimated the quality of studies conducted on the prevalence of dementia and AD in Italy by carrying out a systematic review of the Italian literature published between January 1st 1980 and April 1st 2014, using PubMed/Medline and Embase and searching for the following terms: AND prevalence AND Italy, with no language restriction

Summary

Introduction

Dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease (AD), is one of the most burdensome medical conditions. Prince and colleagues [4] selected and ranked 51 European studies according to the standardized scoring system described in the 2009 Alzheimer Disease International (ADI) report [5] (Appendix). In this very comprehensive work, the European studies yielded a good (± standard deviation) mean quality score, with 8.2 ± 1.8 points (range of mean ± standard deviation quality scores of the studies across all regions: 5 ± 0.7 to 9.7 ± 2; overall mean all-region quality score: 7.9 ± 2) only 8 % of the studies referred to post-2000 research. The authors confirmed the prevalence data reported by the European Collaboration for Dementia Group (EuroCoDe) [1], with an age and gender standardized prevalence of 7.3 %, which is very similar to the 7.1 % prevalence previously estimated by the EuroCoDe group [1]

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