The picture of a “graying” America may not include as much dementia as previously thought, researchers reported.
The number of people in the U.S. with Alzheimer’s disease and other geriatric cognitive syndromes declined significantly between 2000 and 2012, according to a nationally representative longitudinal study.
In an analysis of data from the the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) of Americans age 65 and up, there was a relative decrease in the prevalence of dementia for both men and women of about 24%, down to 8.8% in 2012 from 11.6% in 2000, Kenneth Langa, MD, PhD, of the University of Michigan Ann Arbor, and colleagues reported online in JAMA Internal Medicine.
