China has world’s fastest rise in dementia with up to 115 million cases forecast by 2050

China has the world’s fastest growing number of cases of dementia with the number of diagnosed cases increasing threefold over the past three decades, a new study has warned.

In 1990 the country had about 4 million patients with dementia, a number that rose to 17 million by 2021 and is projected to reach 115 million by 2050, according to the research published in PLOS One earlier this month.

The study did not highlight a specific reason for this increase, but the country is already grappling with a range of challenges caused by its rapidly ageing population and this trend threatens to compound the problem.

“Alzheimer’s and other dementias (ADD) are one of the diseases with the heaviest global disease burden. The disease burden of ADD in China and globally has increased year by year from 1990 to 2021,” said co-authors Siyu Liu and Geng Daoying, from Fudan University.

Geng’s research team used data from the Global Burden of Disease database – a free resource backed by international bodies such as the World Health Organization – to collect and analyse the incidence and potential risk factors of dementia in individuals aged 40 and over from 204 countries and regions.

They found that the incidence, prevalence and mortality rates of dementia cases had doubled globally between 1990 and 2021, but over the same period the number of cases rose threefold in China.

  

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