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THURSDAY, March 14, 2019 (HealthDay News) – Dementia is now one of the leading causes of death in the United States, with the rate of disease-related deaths more than doubling over the past two decades.
"Overall, age-adjusted dementia death rates have increased from 30.5 deaths per 100,000 population in 2000 to 66.7 in 2017," said a team of researchers from the US Centers for Disease Control and Control. disease prevention.
In absolute numbers, the new badysis of death certificate data shows that dementia is the leading cause of nearly 262,000 deaths in 2017, of which 46% are due to Alzheimer's disease.
This represents approximately 84,000 deaths attributed to dementia in 2000.
"This is a huge increase from 2000 to 2017," said Keith Fargo, director of scientific programs and outreach for the Alzheimer's Association. "It's a big problem, and it's getting bigger."
The aging US population is likely to be behind this increase in dementia deaths, said lead researcher Ellen Kramarow, a health statistician at the CDC.
"Part of what is probably happening is that people live until old age, and these are the ones where the risk of dementia is highest," Kramarow said. "If you have not died of heart disease, cancer or something else and you are reaching a very advanced age, the risk of developing dementia is more high."
Not only are people living longer, but older people now make up a larger percentage of the total population, said Fargo, who did not participate in the study.
Part of the observed increase could also be attributed to better record keeping for dementia-related deaths, Fargo added.
"Doctors better identify dementia and register it in the death certificate," he said.
Even then, this report probably underestimates the number of people dying of dementia, Fargo said.
"We know that death certificates under-represent the real mortality rate due to Alzheimer's disease and other dementias," he said.
At this point, the new report also reported 129,700 deaths in 2017 for which dementia was listed on the death certificate as a contributing factor but not as the leading cause of death, Kramarow said.
Dementia is a progressive brain disease that can be fatal if the person dies first for another cause, said Fargo.
"It starts with brain changes and ends with death," he said. "Basically, Alzheimer's disease is a universally fatal brain disorder."
For this latest study, Kramarow and colleagues examined death certificate data for four reasons for dementia-related deaths: Alzheimer's disease, dementia with no specific cause, vascular dementia, and others. degenerative diseases of the nervous system.
The mortality rate was higher among women (about 73 per 100,000) than among men (56.4).
The researchers found that mortality rates for dementia were higher among whites (70.8) than among blacks (65) or Hispanics (46).
Previous research has shown that blacks and Hispanics are more likely to develop dementia than whites, which creates a "little headache," Kramarow said.
"It may be that these groups are more likely to die of other things before they die of insanity," she said.
As expected, the death certificate data also show that age plays a major role in the death of dementia. Mortality rates were about 57 per 100,000 for people aged 65 to 74, but 2,770 per 100,000 for those aged 85 and over.
The search for dementia and Alzheimer's disease is essential to lower these numbers, Fargo said.
"If you look at the same type of CDC statistics for other major killers, they almost all tend to go down in the same period," he said.
"They have all been taken seriously by society to the point of investing billions of dollars a year to defeat these diseases, and we have great success: we can do it when we decide to defeat an illness through the Biomedical research "We need to take the same approach with Alzheimer's and other dementias," Fargo said.
The study was published on March 14 in the CDC. National Reports on Vital Statistics.
More information
The US National Institute on Aging provides more information on end-of-life care for people with dementia.
SOURCES: Ellen Kramarow, Ph.D., Health Statistician, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Keith Fargo, Ph.D., Director of Scientific Programs and Outreach, Alzheimer's Association; March 14, 2019, National Reports on Vital Statistics
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