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| An MRI scan of a human brain: dementia sufferers are becoming younger. Photo: Alamy |
by Colin Pritchard, The Guardian,
7 August 2015
From background radiation to chemicals in the food chain, environmental changes are contributing to a rapid global rise in neurological disease
My interest in neurological disease was triggered by a second friend dying of motor neurone disease (MND), which in purely statistical terms was exceptional. It is suggested there is an incidence of about one in 50,000 who are affected by MND and most die. No one knows 50,000 people, so was it a statistical fluke?
This raised the question of whether there were increases not only in MND, but in neurological disorders as a whole, including the dementias. Using World Health Organisation mortality data, which – while not perfect – is the best information available as it is collated in a standard and uniform way, myself and colleagues at the faculty of health and social sciences at Bournemouth University set out to investigate this.
Our first study, focusing on the changing pattern of neurological deaths from 1979 up to 1997, found that dementias were starting 10 years earlier – affecting more people in their 40s and 50s – and that there was a noticeable increase in neurological deaths in people up to the age of 74. In a follow-up study, taking us to 2010 and across 21 western countries, these increases were confirmed.
From background radiation to chemicals in the food chain, environmental changes are contributing to a rapid global rise in neurological disease
My interest in neurological disease was triggered by a second friend dying of motor neurone disease (MND), which in purely statistical terms was exceptional. It is suggested there is an incidence of about one in 50,000 who are affected by MND and most die. No one knows 50,000 people, so was it a statistical fluke?
This raised the question of whether there were increases not only in MND, but in neurological disorders as a whole, including the dementias. Using World Health Organisation mortality data, which – while not perfect – is the best information available as it is collated in a standard and uniform way, myself and colleagues at the faculty of health and social sciences at Bournemouth University set out to investigate this.
Our first study, focusing on the changing pattern of neurological deaths from 1979 up to 1997, found that dementias were starting 10 years earlier – affecting more people in their 40s and 50s – and that there was a noticeable increase in neurological deaths in people up to the age of 74. In a follow-up study, taking us to 2010 and across 21 western countries, these increases were confirmed.
