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Dementia Prevention, Intervention, and Care: The 2024 Report of the Lancet Commission
TAKE-HOME MESSAGE
- The 2024 update of the Lancet Commission highlights new evidence about prevention, intervention, and care, particularly as dementia rates increase with longer lifespans. However, despite an increase in dementia cases owing to longevity, age-specific incidence is decreasing in high-income countries. New research since 2020 has shown how cognitive and physical reserves develop across life, and how reducing vascular damage likely contributes to lower age-related dementia incidence. The study confirms that addressing 14 modifiable risk factors, including hearing loss, vision loss, high LDL levels, and smoking, could prevent or delay nearly half of dementia cases. The first year after a mild cognitive impairment diagnosis is crucial for intervention. The findings underscore the importance of early, lifelong prevention strategies, especially in low-income populations, and advocate for education, cognitive stimulation, exercise, and reducing harmful environmental exposures to lower dementia risk.
- In this significant report, the Lancet Commission highlights a few important and clinically applicable points regarding dementia prevention, intervention, and care:
- They identify untreated vision loss and high LDL levels as risk factors for dementia based on some new evidence.
- Combined with the existing literature on risk factors, the commission generates a comprehensive life-course perspective on dementia prevention.
- They also suggest that, although some associations may be only partly causal, there is hope, projecting that almost half of dementia cases could be prevented with this approach.
abstract
This abstract is available on the publisher's site.
Access this abstract now Full Text Available for ClinicalKey SubscribersThe 2024 update of the Lancet Commission on dementia provides new hopeful evidence about dementia prevention, intervention, and care. As people live longer, the number of people who live with dementia continues to rise, even as the age-specific incidence decreases in high-income countries, emphasising the need to identify and implement prevention approaches. We have summarised the new research since the 2020 report of the Lancet Commission on dementia, prioritising systematic reviews and meta-analyses and triangulating findings from different studies showing how cognitive and physical reserve develop across the life course and how reducing vascular damage (eg, by reducing smoking and treating high blood pressure) is likely to have contributed to a reduction in age-related dementia incidence. Evidence is increasing and is now stronger than before that tackling the many risk factors for dementia that we modelled previously (ie, less education, hearing loss, hypertension, smoking, obesity, depression, physical inactivity, diabetes, excessive alcohol consumption [ie, >21 UK units, equivalent to >12 US units], traumatic brain injury [TBI], air pollution, and social isolation) reduces the risk of developing dementia. In this report, we add the new compelling evidence that untreated vision loss and high LDL cholesterol are risk factors for dementia.
Additional Info
Dementia prevention, intervention, and care: 2024 report of the Lancet standing Commission
Lancet 2024 Aug 10;404(10452)572-628, G Livingston, J Huntley, KY Liu, SG Costafreda, G Selbæk, S Alladi, D Ames, S Banerjee, A Burns, C Brayne, NC Fox, CP Ferri, LN Gitlin, R Howard, HC Kales, M Kivimäki, EB Larson, N Nakasujja, K Rockwood, Q Samus, K Shirai, A Singh-Manoux, LS Schneider, S Walsh, Y Yao, A Sommerlad, N MukadamFrom MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.