> Dementias such as Alzheimer's disease are estimated to affect more than 57.4 million people worldwide, a number that is expected to almost triple to 152.8 million cases by 2050

Meaningless number. Make it % or incidence rate per 1000 or something.

57 million people? That’s not so many compared to the billion in China or India. Or is it? Compare it to cancers or car accidents.

▲

craftkiller 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

> Make it % or incidence rate per 1000 or something.

Just type it into a calculator. The computer will do all the work.

Current world population is ~8 billion so 57_000_000 / 8_000_000_000 = 0.007125

So 0.7% or 7 per 1000 people.

	▲	echelon 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		Dementia is a disease that mostly effects elderly patients, so make the denominator the number of people in the 65-100 age group. Roughly 10% of the world population, or 800 million, fall within this age group. 57_000_000 / 800_000_000 ~= 7% That's quite a large number of people who will be impacted. > a number that is expected to almost triple to 152.8 million cases by 2050 I don't have the statistics for the elderly population in 2050, but if we assume the proportion is the same (it won't be), then the higher incidence case rate is sobering. It's nearly 20%.

▲

sgustard 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The increase is almost entirely due to aging population.

"The Lancet study indicates that although the total number of dementia cases is expected to increase substantially, the percentage of the global population affected, once age-adjusted, remains nearly constant, with just a 0.1% change globally between 2019 and 2050"