Half of Women to Develop Stroke, Dementia, or Parkinsonism

THURSDAY, Oct. 25, 2018 — One in two women and one in three men will develop dementia, stroke, or parkinsonism during their lifetime, according to a study published online Oct. 1 in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry.

Silvan Licher, from University Medical Center Rotterdam in the Netherlands, and colleagues used data from the prospective population-based Rotterdam Study to estimate lifetime risk for dementia, stroke, and parkinsonism during 1990 to 2016 among 12,102 individuals (57.7 percent women) aged ≥45 years who were free from these diseases at baseline.

The researchers found that during 26 years of follow-up, 1,489 individuals were diagnosed with dementia, 1,285 with stroke, and 263 with parkinsonism. Of these, 14.6 percent were diagnosed with multiple diseases. Compared with men, women were almost twice as likely to be diagnosed with both stroke and dementia during their lifetime. At age 45 years, the lifetime risk for any of these diseases was 48.2 percent in women and 36.2 percent in men, with the difference driven by a higher risk for dementia as the first manifesting disease in women compared with men. For stroke and parkinsonism, the risk was similar in men and women.

“Preventive strategies that delay disease onset with one to three years could theoretically reduce lifetime risk for developing any of these diseases by 20 percent to 50 percent,” write the authors.

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Posted: October 2018

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