One in 10 older adults in U.S. has dementia: research

A man walks on the street in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, the United States, on June 10, 2021. (Photo by Ting Shen/Xinhua)

Ten percent of U.S. adults 65 and older have dementia, while 22 percent have mild cognitive impairment.

NEW YORK, Nov. 1 (Xinhua) -- One in 10 U.S. adults over 65 has dementia, The Washington Post on Monday cited a study, while 1 in 5 has cognitive difficulties.

Published on Oct. 24 in JAMA Neurology, the research updates 20-year-old estimates of the number of older Americans with dementia and mild cognitive impairment.

For the current study, researchers looked at 2016-2017 test results from 3,500 study participants 65 and older. The battery of tests measured their memory, attention, comprehension and such factors as whether they were able to live independently and how their abilities had changed over the previous decade.

The results suggest that 10 percent of U.S. adults 65 and older have dementia, while 22 percent have mild cognitive impairment, in which memory and other functions deteriorate. The latter condition is thought to occur during the transition to dementia.

Although the rates were about even for men and women, they skewed higher with age; while 3 percent of people in their 60s had dementia, that figure rose to 35 percent for people in their 90s, according to the report.

The dementia rate was higher for older adults who identify as Black or African American than for their counterparts. While 15 percent of older Black people have dementia, only 11 percent of older White adults and 10 percent of older Hispanic people do, it added.