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About 1M Americans will develop dementia by 2060, double what was previously thought

Home caregiver and senior man holding hands.
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Home caregiver and senior man holding hands.

Roughly 1 million Americans a year are expected to develop dementia by 2060. That’s about double what was previously thought.

To put it more sobering terms, the study found that the lifetime risk of dementia after age 55 years was 42%. That’s roughly four in 10. Dr. Anna Burke is director of the Alzheimer's and Memory Disorders Division at Barrow Neurological Institute.

"I think this study really shows us how much of a crisis and how much of an issue this will become over the next several decades," Burke said.

The study, which appeared in the journal Nature Medicine, found that rates were higher in women, Black adults and those who carry the APOE-4 gene with lifetime risks ranging from approximately 45% to 60%.

"We can't control our family history. We can't control our genetics," Burke said.

However, she says, we can control things like eating a healthy diet and exercising regularly.

"Our lifestyle, unfortunately, the typical American lifestyle is not conducive to good brain health. We're becoming less active. We have more and more chronic conditions," she said.

Burke says blood tests for Alzheimer’s disease are available and are about 93% accurate. Alzheimer’s is the most common form of dementia.

KJZZ senior field correspondent Kathy Ritchie has 20 years of experience reporting and writing stories for national and local media outlets — nearly a decade of it has been spent in public media.
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