2025/03/12 by Lorenzo Blandi, Paola Bertuccio, Timo Clemens +2
Health Professions · Medicine · #Dementia and Cognitive Impairment Research #Geriatric Care and Nursing Homes #Palliative Care and End-of-Life Issues
paper · doi:10.1016/j.annepidem.2025.03.007
openalex publication_date 2025/03/12 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
PURPOSE: We aimed to estimate trends of dementia incidence and to compute and compare all-cause mortality among people living with and without dementia, in a whole regional population, from 2013 to 2023. METHODS: Our retrospective population-wide cohort study included 7,030,374 people aged 50 years and older from regional administrative data, living in Lombardy, the most populous Italian region. We computed annual age-standardised dementia incidence estimated rates and age-standardised all-cause mortality estimated rates among people living with and without dementia, both overall and stratified by age and sex. RESULTS: Over the last decade, age-standardised dementia incidence estimated rates have decreased by 52.8 % for women and 53.1 % for males. In contrast, age-standardised all-cause mortality estimated rates among people living with dementia grew by 14.0 % for women and 21.8 % for males. Conversely, during the pandemic, there was a higher excess in mortality estimated rates in the female population living with dementia compared to the male, up to 60 % in older groups aged 80 or older. In the male population without dementia compared to the female, the higher excess was up to 50 % in age groups of 70-74 and 75-79. CONCLUSIONS: Our study reported a reduction in dementia incidence and increase in all-cause mortality of people living with dementia over the last decade, indicating that dementia prevalence is declining. Moreover, previously under-investigated gender disparities in mortality estimated rates emerged across different age groups during the pandemic.