Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2019 Nov 11:2019:5378540.
doi: 10.1155/2019/5378540. eCollection 2019.

Gender and Age Differences and the Trend in the Incidence and Prevalence of Dementia and Alzheimer's Disease in Taiwan: A 7-Year National Population-Based Study

Chih-Ching Liu  1 , Chung-Yi Li  1   2 , Yu Sun  3 , Susan C Hu  1
Affiliations

Gender and Age Differences and the Trend in the Incidence and Prevalence of Dementia and Alzheimer's Disease in Taiwan: A 7-Year National Population-Based Study

Chih-Ching Liu et al. Biomed Res Int. .

Abstract

Background: Very few nationwide studies have focused on the variations in the incidence and prevalence of dementia and Alzheimer's disease (AD) in Asian countries. This study aims to describe the gender and age differences in the incidence and prevalence of dementia and AD in Taiwan.

Methods: The data on dementia and AD were acquired from the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database from 2004 to 2010. The sex and age-specific rates were standardized, and the differences of gender and age on dementia or AD were assessed using Poisson regression analysis.

Results: Over seven years, the prevalence of dementia and AD significantly increased from 4.7 to 7.6 per hundred people (β = 0.0784, p < 0.0001) and 2.3 to 3.5 per hundred people (β = 0.0696, p < 0.0001), respectively. However, the incidence of both dementia and AD decreased but not significantly from 10.9 to 10.7 and 4.9 to 4.6 per thousand person-years, respectively. Noticeably, both incidence and prevalence increased with age and were higher in women than in men.

Conclusions: The standardized incidence rates of dementia and AD are much lower than the data reported in some studies from Europe, the US, and Japan. Further studies are warranted to explore which factors are associated with the differences in the incidence of dementia and AD in Taiwan.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The sex-specific (age-standardized) annual incidence (a, b) and prevalence (c, d) rates of dementia and Alzheimer's disease (AD) in Taiwan, 2004–2010.
Figure 2
Figure 2
The age- and sex-specific incidence (a, b) and prevalence (c, d) rates of dementia and Alzheimer's disease (AD) in Taiwan, 2004–2010.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. World Health Organization. Dementia: a public health priority. May 2018. http://www.who.int/mental_health/publications/dementia_report_2012/en/
    1. Alzheimer’s Disease International. World Alzheimer report 2015: the global impact of dementia. May 2018. https://www.alz.co.uk/research/world-report-2015.
    1. Winblad B., Amouyel P., Andrieu S., et al. Defeating Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias: a priority for European science and society. The Lancet Neurology. 2016;15(5):455–532. doi: 10.1016/s1474-4422(16)00062-4. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Alzheimer’s Disease International. World Alzheimer report 2014: dementia and risk reduction. June 2018. https://www.alz.co.uk/research/WorldAlzheimerReport2014.pdf.
    1. Pérès K., Brayne C., Matharan F., et al. Trends in prevalence of dementia in French farmers from two epidemiological cohorts. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. 2017;65(2):415–420. doi: 10.1111/jgs.14575. - DOI - PubMed