#Dementia kills double the amount of Americans than previously thought

Almost three times more Americans are killed by dementia than previously thought, new research has found.

Dementia — the loss of cognitive function, usually caused by Alzheimer’s disease — may be an underlying cause of death in close to triple the number of US deaths than records currently state.

A study published Monday in the journal JAMA Neurology found that national mortality rates seriously underestimate the impact of dementia. Researchers estimate that 13.6% of death certificates should indicate dementia as a cause, a number 2.7 times as high as the current 5% which list the disease.

“These findings indicate that dementia represents a much more important factor in US mortality than previously indicated by routine death records,” senior study author Eileen Crimmins said in a statement.

To reach these findings, authors used data from a nine-year study of over 7,000 adults in nursing homes. The results are reflective of factors much more complex than an innocent miscounting.

“In the case of dementia, there are numerous challenges to obtaining accurate death counts, including stigma and lack of routine testing for dementia in primary care,” said lead study author Andrew Stokes. “In addition to underestimating dementia deaths, official tallies also appear to underestimate racial and ethnic disparities associated with dementia mortality.”

Researchers found that 7.1 times more black adults, 4.1 times more Hispanic adults and 2.3 times more white adults die from dementia than government records reflect. Dementia was also more underreported as a cause of death for those without a high school education and for males.

In other recent, groundbreaking research, scientists have developed an experimental blood test that can detect Alzheimer’s disease with a high rate of accuracy — making researchers hopeful that they can innovate a simple, affordable and widely available new form of diagnosis — and have discovered that a handful of simple lifestyle changes could prevent close to half of all dementia cases.