According to a first-of-its-kind artificial intelligence study, more than 10 million adults aged 60 years or more in India may have dementia, which is comparable to the prevalence rate of countries such as the US and the UK. The research was published in the journal Neuroepidemiology and used an AI technique known as semi-supervised machine learning to analyze data from 31,477 older adults.
As per the study, 10.08 million senior citizens in India, or 8.44 per cent of all persons aged 60 years or above, may be suffering from dementia. The researchers said this compared to reported prevalence rates of 8.8 per cent in the US, 9 per cent in the UK and between 8.5 and 9 per cent in Germany and France in similar age groups.
The researchers also found that the prevalence of dementia was higher for those who were older, were female and had received no education, and lived in rural areas. “Our research was based on the first and only nationally representative aging study in India, which included over 30,000 older adults in the country,” said Haomiao Jin, co-author of the study and lecturer in health data science at the University of Surrey, UK. were attending.”
“AI has a unique strength in interpreting such large and complex data, and our research found that dementia prevalence in local samples may exceed prior estimates,” Jin continued.
According to the CDC, dementia is not a specific disease, but rather a general term for an impaired ability to remember, think, or make decisions that interferes with performing everyday activities. Alzheimer’s disease is the most common type of dementia. Although dementia mostly affects older adults, it is not a part of normal aging. The World Health Organization ranks dementia as the seventh leading cause of death among all diseases and one of the leading causes of disability and dependency among older people globally. The agency also said that there are different forms of dementia, but Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form and may contribute to 60-70 percent of cases. Other major forms include vascular dementia, dementia with Lewy bodies (people with this form of dementia may have movement or balance problems such as stiffness or tremors), fronto-temporal dementia which causes changes in personality and behavior due to part of the brain Goes towards it has an effect.
Speaking of AI studies, the research team from the University of Surrey, University of Southern California, University of Michigan, both in the US and the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, developed the AI learning model. The model was trained on data that included a dataset labeled 70 percent with dementia diagnoses from a novel online consensus diagnosis, while the remaining 30 percent were fed a test set to assess the AI’s prediction accuracy. was reserved as
It states that the AI taught itself to predict dementia status for unlabeled observations without a dementia diagnosis in the dataset. Professor Adrian Hilton, Director of the University of Surrey Institute for People-Centred AI, said, “As we are seeing from this research, AI has enormous potential to discover patterns in complex data, thereby improving our understanding of is how diseases affect people.” Very different community to support the development of precision medical interventions to save lives.”
Signs and Symptoms of Dementia
According to WHO, the early stages of dementia are often overlooked because the onset is gradual. Common symptoms may include: forgetfulness, loss of time, getting lost in familiar places.
As it progresses, these symptoms may include: forgetting recent events and people’s names being confused while at home increasing difficulty with communication needing help with personal care experiencing changes in behavior and wandering and questioning repeatedly.
According to the WHO, the final stage of dementia is one of almost complete dependence and inactivity and includes loss of awareness of time and place, difficulty recognizing relatives and friends, increased need for assisted self-care, difficulty walking, behavior May include experiencing Changes that can escalate and include aggression.
treatment of dementia
Currently, there is no treatment available to cure dementia. The WHO states that the anti-dementia drugs and disease-modifying therapies developed so far have limited efficacy and are mainly off-label for Alzheimer’s disease. In addition, much can be done to support and improve the lives of people with dementia and their carers and families.
(With inputs from ANI)
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