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Younger Generations Less Likely To Have Dementia, Study Suggests 78

Posted by BeauHD from the reversing-the-trend dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: People born more recently are less likely to have dementia at any given age than earlier generations, research suggests, with the trend more pronounced in women. According to the World Health Organization, in 2021 there were 57 million people worldwide living with dementia, with women disproportionately affected. However, while the risk of dementia increases with age, experts have long stressed it is not not an inevitability of getting older. "Younger generations are less likely to develop dementia at the same age as their parents or grandparents, and that's a hopeful sign," said Dr Sabrina Lenzen, a co-author of the study from the University of Queensland's Centre for the Business and Economics of Health. But she added: "The overall burden of dementia will still grow as populations age, and significant inequalities remain -- especially by gender, education and geography."

Writing in the journal Jama Network Open, researchers in Australia report how they analyzed data from 62,437 people aged 70 and over, collected from three long-running surveys covering the US, England and parts of Europe. The team used an algorithm that took into account participants' responses to a host of different metrics, from the difficulties they had with everyday activities to their scores on cognitive tests, to determine whether they were likely to have dementia. They then split the participants into eight different cohorts, representing different generations. Participants were also split into six age groups. As expected, the researchers found the prevalence of dementia increased by age among all birth cohorts, and in each of the three regions: UK, US and Europe. However, at a given age, people in more recent generations were less likely to have dementia compared with those in earlier generations.

"For example, in the US, among people aged 81 to 85, 25.1% of those born between 1890-1913 had dementia, compared to 15.5% of those born between 1939-1943," said Lenzen, adding similar trends were seen in Europe and England, although less pronounced in the latter. The team said the trend was more pronounced in women, especially in Europe and England, noting that one reason may be increased access to education for women in the mid-20th century. However, taking into account changes in GDP, a metric that reflects broader economic shifts, did not substantially alter the findings. A number of factors could be contributing to the decline. "This is likely due to interventions such as compulsory education, smoking bans, and improvements in medical treatments for conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, and hearing loss, which are associated with dementia risk," said Prof Tara Spires-Jones, the director of the Centre for Discovery Brain Sciences at the University of Edinburgh.
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Younger Generations Less Likely To Have Dementia, Study Suggests More

Younger Generations Less Likely To Have Dementia, Study Suggests

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  • Let me guess.. (Score:3)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Monday June 02, 2025 @11:34PM (#65423641)

    Young people did the study?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kisai ( 213879 )

      The really obvious answer here is three-fold:
      a) Smoking is now considered bad, it wasn't "bad enough" until the 2000's
      b) Moving away from transfats, which increased shelflife of products with cheap oils
      c) Moving away from carcinogenic cooking (anything browned or burned) in favor of using things like air fryers and rice cookers which cook things slower but better.

      Like dementia has literately been pointed to as a consequence of BSE (Mad Cow disease) or Prion disease, so a lot of what causes the brain to deve

      • Re:Let me guess.. (Score:5, Informative)

        by sg_oneill ( 159032 ) on Tuesday June 03, 2025 @12:50AM (#65423725)

        Hold up. The protein folding thing is s hypotheis and while it was previously held to be THE THING, it pans out a lot of that was based on fraudulent research which only recently came to light after a string of failed trials led to a reevaluation of the antecedent studies pointing to them uncovering actual scientific fraud. The end result is that our scientific consensus on the cause being folding errors is now somewhere in the triad of "Not always", "Possibly never" and "We dont actually know".

        What we DO know is that known Prion causes (CJD) are rather rare within the dementia pool of patients. Certainly NOT a majority cause.

        Now we do know with Lewy body and Alzheimers we do see plaques and tangles. What we dont know is if these are causative or a symptom. This is made worse by our innability to effectively treat these. Tangles.... that one we have no idea where to even start treating these. Its literally tangled up neurons, and we actually all have them, especially as we age. the difference is the level of it, and thats a real humdinger of a problem to treat becuase how exactly WOULD we create a drug or treatment that can untie knots (literally what the tangles are)

        Dementia is complex as hell, and its unlikely we'll ever see a single cause with a cure, simply because there straight up isnt a single cause.

        • Dementia is complex as hell, and its unlikely we'll ever see a single cause with a cure, simply because there straight up isnt a single cause.

          And old ideas keep resurfacing. I see the rise of "Aluminum gives you Alzheimer's" popping up again.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by kackle ( 910159 )
          At the risk of being chided again (good old /.), I saw a documentary that found those same plaques in the humans' appendixes of a tribe that would often get parasites from a local water supply--the infections correlated with the appendix plaques. So the theory there was that the plaques were the result of, or response to, the parasites.

          • Sure, but thats *highly* unlikely to be the case in dementia. Blood brain barrier and all that.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by kackle ( 910159 )
              Their theory was that the plaques were the body's (intentional/unintentional?) response to an infection/attack. That is, they were not saying there are "brain parasites" but rather "here we see the body's similar response to invasion in an area other than the brain".

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by migos ( 10321981 )
        The "younger generation" in this study is people born in 1939-1943. From TFA: “This is likely due to interventions such as compulsory education, smoking bans, and improvements in medical treatments for conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, and hearing loss, which are associated with dementia risk,” she said.

      • I'm putting pesticides and heavy metals above transfats and air fryers since both are known to be neurotoxic and there has been a clear move away from them going back 20+ years. Air fryers are way too new of a fad to have had much impact.

      • Re:Let me guess.. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 ) on Tuesday June 03, 2025 @01:12AM (#65423749) Homepage Journal

        Like dementia has literately been pointed to as a consequence of BSE (Mad Cow disease) or Prion disease, so a lot of what causes the brain to develop plaques is from tissue dying from the prions destroying the brain tissue.

        BSE, scrapie, deer chronic wasting disease.... Officially, it is generally believed that scrapie isn't transmissible to humans, but this is likely false [nih.gov].

        But nothing really interesting happened in that area until they banned using animals in animal feed in 1997, and a majority of the impact from that would already have been realized, because the incubation period is usually single-digit years, though it can be longer in some cases.

        Alzheimer's and Parkinson's both involve misfolded proteins. Call them prions or don't, but that sure sounds like a prion disease to me. And tau proteins exist in cows as well. It wouldn't surprise me at all if differences in the way beef is slaughtered has reduced the risk of transmission of these proteins contaminating the food supply and reduced the rate of those diseases over time.

        In particular, I think the age at which cattle are slaughtered has decreased over time, and the level of prions in a diseased animal increase over time, so that decrease in slaughter age means reduced risk of transmission to humans.

        So... maybe that might be part of it.

      • Re:Let me guess.. (Score:4, Informative)

        by Barsteward ( 969998 ) on Tuesday June 03, 2025 @02:45AM (#65423835)
        And no lead in petrol

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dillee1 ( 741792 )

        -lead in petrol (TEL)
        -lead in ammo (primer, bullet)
        -lead in water (lead solder, iron pipes)
        -neurotoxins in tobacco (lead and friends, nicotine itself)

        are we surprised that younger cohorts are somewhat neurologically healthier because above are being phased out?

      • Also: banning lead in petrol several decades ago.

      • Moving away from carcinogenic cooking (anything browned or burned) in favor of using things like air fryers and rice cookers which cook things slower but better.

        Dementia isn't caused by cancer though, so why would this have any impact? Reduction in people smoking seems to be a more likely cause but given how limited our understanding of dementia seems to be at this point, it's all just wild guessing anyhow.

        • Moving away from carcinogenic cooking (anything browned or burned) in favor of using things like air fryers and rice cookers which cook things slower but better.

          Dementia isn't caused by cancer though, so why would this have any impact? Reduction in people smoking seems to be a more likely cause but given how limited our understanding of dementia seems to be at this point, it's all just wild guessing anyhow.

          If it was from a reduction in smoking, the dementia statistics could get better or could get downright terrifying 30 years from now when the Vape Generation takes the hit.

    • nah older people did but just forgot

    • I donâ(TM)t think thatâ(TM)s the likely cause at all. Instead, Iâ(TM)d expect one of two causes:

      1. Lead not being anywhere near as prevalent in the environment

      2. Flu vaccination rates. Alzheimerâ(TM)s has been linked to severe flu earlier in life relatively recently, so the fact that weâ(TM)re generally more likely to have had vaccinations, and thus less likely to have had severe flu likely lowers the risk of that particular form of dementia.

      • I donâ(TM)t think thatâ(TM)s the likely cause at all. Instead, Iâ(TM)d expect one of two causes:

        1. Lead not being anywhere near as prevalent in the environment

        2. Flu vaccination rates. Alzheimerâ(TM)s has been linked to severe flu earlier in life relatively recently, so the fact that weâ(TM)re generally more likely to have had vaccinations, and thus less likely to have had severe flu likely lowers the risk of that particular form of dementia.

        One of the side effects of lead, esp the tetraethyl version, is memory loss.

        Since this study goes the whole way back to the late 1800's, there was plenty of lead exposure to people at that time. Now given that memory loss is an Alzheimer's symptom, and so is exposure to tetraethyl lead, and given that it was easy to simply assign any memory loss and dementia at the time to Alzheimer's, and that I really doubt they tested for lead until much later, Lead based dementia could easily be assigned to Alzheimer

      • Recent research has shown correlation between viruses and dementia, including markers of dementia. Such viruses includes the herpes virus and the chickenpox/shingles virus. There have been some associations with Covid-19 and elevated beta-amyloid and tau, so we'll see if this impacts the stats over the next few generations. Interestingly, if the flu virus is indeed connected to dementia, then the last big worldwide flu pandemic in 1918 could have been a significant factor in the difference between the tw

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by jonadab ( 583620 )
      I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that most houses these days don't have peeling lead paint, like basically all of them did in the seventies.

  • That makes sense. Other studies have shown that interfacing with gadgets can stem off dementia.

    • It may also produce more ADHD.

      Dementia or inability to focus longer than a goldfish? Not sure which is better.

      • If I had to choose between the two I would pick low attention span every time. Dementia is no joke. It's not "I don't remember where I put my keys" it's "I shit my pants because I can't find the bathroom in my own house."

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Tablizer ( 95088 )

        You'll beat your hospital mate with a bed-pan, but otherwise keep your memory a bit longer.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      That makes sense. Other studies have shown that interfacing with gadgets can stem off dementia.

      Remaining physically and mentally active in general slows the progression. And in spite of obesity being worse, we're doing more to combat at least some of the negative effects of that, and people are retiring later and working for more years, and people are doing more mentally because of tech. All of these things likely play a role.

      Reduction in organophosphates also likely contributes (banned for in-home use since 2005). Declining use of trichloroethylene and perchloroethylene since the mid-1990s has al

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cusco ( 717999 )

        Dementia in the elderly has been strongly linked to mental plasticity at younger ages. Until the third quarter of the 20th century just admitting to having doubts about the existence of god or the eternal correctness of your government was just plain unthinkable to a large majority of the population and would mean your social circle would probably completely shun you.

        One of my grandmothers had Alzheimers, I distinctly remember the only political discussion I tried to have with her. Carter had done somethi

  • people aged 81 to 85, 25.1% of those born between 1890-1913 had dementia, compared to 15.5% of those born between 1939-1943,

    Count me as skeptical they have comparable information on dementia gathered in 1970-1975 (80-85 year olds born in 1890) and 2019-2023 (80-85 year olds born in 1943). But clearly those are different historical periods. There were a lot of soldiers in that first cohort.

  • You can't lose what you've abandoned. Remembering which folder you put your aimless, pointless, lunchtime vlog in is not a memory retention skill.
  • If you never use your brain, how can it cause you issues?????

  • Tech (Score:3)

    by ledow ( 319597 ) on Tuesday June 03, 2025 @09:23AM (#65424267) Homepage

    It's to do with screen time too.

    Keeping your mind busy is important to prevent dementia.

    Dumbly starting at a TV screen for 8 hours every night and letting it wash over you is awful for your brain (and your opinions!).

    But if you're actively doing something, researching, clicking around, seeking out specific content, etc. then it turns from just consuming media to interacting with it.

    If you're switching to a game, watching a video, reading an article, going down a link-clicking rabbit-hole, shopping, browsing, talking to friends, multitasking and doing all that for a long (collective) time, then the interaction is actually positive for your mental cognivity.

    Sure, you can go too far and just watching YouTube is the same as just watching TV, but I would strongly suggest that being able to have international, 24 hour social interactions, lessons, entertainment, and reading material right there, all the time - that's likely to show benefits not present in generations that eschew such things.

    Everything in moderation, obviously, but my life is lived out through my phone and laptop, and I'm always using it to learn all the time.

    And I don't have a TV and if I do watch TV/movies, it's literally turn it on, watch exactly what I intended to (no ads) and then turn it off and go do something else.

    Part of this is, undoubtedly, a generation like my parents rotting away watching 24 hours news channels, contrived soap operas and the like, who detest technology and can barely answer a text, versus a generation that are messaging each other from bed even in different countries to discuss the gossip / topics of the day that they learned about online, and delving into whatever part of that interests them in an independent manner, and interacting with people with disparate social backgrounds, languages, opinions, politics, etc.

    We talk about echo chambers and walled gardens.... and it's the older generations that have confined themselves to those, mostly.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by ledow ( 319597 )

      There's a reason that I buy my parents tech to occupy them and make them think and encourage them to do things.

      They've basically never read a book. But they love puzzles. They hate tech, but love casual video games (anything more complex is too much for them as they can't strategise, plan, learn, etc.).

      I don't want to be dealing with their dementia, and the best way to do that is to keep their minds active.

  • Children born since the 1970s were the first of subsequent generations whos life expectancy is lower than that of their parents, this is why.

    • >> Children born since the 1970s were the first of subsequent generations whos life expectancy is lower than that of their parents, this is why.

      Unclear.. life expectancy as a whole has been rising steadily. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]. Any graph on the right hand side.

      The idea that children will have lower life expectancy is at an educated expectation based primarily on the increase in childhood obesity and the expected subsequent diabetes and heart disease issues.

      The problem with this assertio

  • I submit as an alternative hypothesis the rise of computers and interactive entertainment as a cause.

    The rise of computers since 1970 coincides with the timing.

    The interactive nature of computers in general engage the brain more than just watching tv (3 channels old timey tv), listening to radio, or even reading the newspaper. Games in particular engage the brain much more than being a couch potato. Social media allows faster, easier, and more frequent interactions. The quality of these brain engagements

  • If we keep destroying the environment, youngsters will not live long enough to develop alzheimer's

  • So, let's see, it turns out that people born in 1990 do not have dementia when they are 80. Seems they've buried the lede -- the time machine that let them get this data.

  • Gotta be, right??? What else could explain it!

  • Spires-Jones added the study had limitations, including that it did not rely on official diagnoses of dementia based on clinical testing.

    So the study relied on nothing.

  • Great! Here I was looking forward to rocking in a chair spewing mindless garbage, and AI has taken that over from me. :-)

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