Abstract
Objective: This study aims to estimate the prevalence of dementia and Alzheimer's disease (AD) and associated risk factors among the general Chinese population.Methods: We carried out a nationwide study including 24,117 participants aged 60 years and older in China using a multistage clustered sampling. Dementia and AD were diagnosed according to the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and the criteria issued by the National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Disorders and Stroke–Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders Association. Face-to-face interviews were administered by the trained interviewers to obtain information on demographics, lifestyle factors, and previous diseases.Results: The overall weighted prevalence of dementia was 4.22% (95%CI 2.27–6.17%) for people aged 60 years and older, was higher in women than in men and increased with age. Daily tea drinking and daily exercises were the protective factors for both dementia and AD. Engaging in social and intellectual activities was significantly associated with a lower risk of dementia and AD.Conclusions: A large number of population with dementia posed a significant challenge to China where the population is rapidly aging. The increase of public awareness, building more care facilities, and training dementia specialists and professional caregivers are all urgently needed and should be the future priorities of dementia care in China.
Highlights
China is aging much faster than other low- and middle-income countries
We reported the prevalence of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and associated risk factors among the general population aged 60 years and older, based on a large nationwide study carried out in China in 2015
We tested the interaction for different risk factors with gender, and the results showed that there were interactions for occupation (p = 0.006), body mass index (BMI) (p = 0.011), and regular exercises (p < 0.0001) with gender, but not for the others
Summary
WHO estimated that the proportion of the population aged 60 years and over will increase from 12.4% in 2010 to 28% in 2040 [1]. The Global Burden of Disease Study 2016 reported that the number of patients with dementia in China accounted for ∼25% of the entire population with dementia worldwide [3]. A few studies have reported the prevalence of dementia in China, and the estimates remain inconsistent, ranging from 5.0 to 7.7% for people aged 60 years and older and from 2.0 to 13.0% for people aged 65 years and older [4]. A recent meta-analysis summarized 96 studies and reported an overall prevalence of dementia of 5.30% (4.30–6.30%) for Chinese population aged 60 years and above [6], which was lower than the estimate for China (6.19%) and southeast Asia (7.64%) by the World Alzheimer Report 2015 [2]
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