Dementia Rates Fall Sharply in Older Americans, Study Finds

Dementia rates among older Americans have fallen sharply over the past four decades, according to research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Eric Stallard, a researcher at Duke University, and colleagues found that 40 years ago three in every ten Americans aged 85-89 had dementia. By 2024 that figure had dropped to one in ten.

The decline is not limited to the United States. Frank Wolters of the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam and colleagues studied nearly 50,000 people across six countries in North America and Europe. Between 1988 and 2015 the share of older people diagnosed with dementia fell by 13% each decade.