Prevention of dementia around the globe, an EAGP-webinar
In 2021, the Interdem-taskforce on primary prevention published an article in A&MH calling for primary prevention to be on everybody’s agenda, given the potential impact (Steyaert et al., 2021). Early on in 2022, we had an online meeting to further work on this subject.
We were very glad to learn about a webinar organized by European Association of Geriatric Psychiatry (EAGP) about prevention of dementia around the globe. This took place on 11th of February as part of their free one-hour webinars on old age psychiatry. Presentations came from Gill Livingston, Professor of psychiatry of older people at University College London and chairperson of the important dementia committee of The Lancet (Livingston et al., 2020; Livingston et al., 2017) and Dr Gautam Saha, past president of the Indian Psychiatric Society.
Chaired by Karin Sparring Björkstén (Sweden), the webinar was shortly opened by Interdem-member Martin Orrell, followed by Gill Livingston. She presented on why w45-65e should consider dementia to be preventable and the twelve risk factors identified by the committee already mentioned. In mid life (45-65), these include factors like obesity, hypertension and excessive alcohol use, but surprisingly also neglected hearing loss. Using hearing aids can significantly protect from resulting cognitive decline. She also reflected on the challenges of organizing randomized controlled trials in this area, to finish with reiterating of of the main conclusions in their 2017-report: “be ambitious about prevention”.
Dr Gautam Saha added to this from the perspective of India with a large population with rapidly rising life expectancy, and consequently also a rising number of persons with dementia. He also stressed the importance of not only primary prevention, but also secondary and even tertiary prevention.
References:
Livingston, G., et al. (2020). Dementia prevention, intervention, and care: 2020 report of the Lancet Commission. The Lancet. doi: DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30367-6
Livingston, G., et al. (2017). Dementia prevention, intervention, and care. The Lancet, online. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(17)31363-6
Steyaert, J., et al. (2021). Putting primary prevention of dementia on everybody’s agenda. Aging & Mental Health, 25(8), 1376-1380. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/13607863.2020.1783514
