80% of Americans with dementia may not even know that they have it: Sciencecert

Most people with dementia in the United States ignore their condition. A study based on population in Texas has now found that four in five people in probable dementia have not received a formal diagnosis and are not dealt with for a cognitive decline.

Nor is it for a lack of health care. In the new study, less than 7% of participants with probable dementia did not have a primary care provider, and there was no link between a lack of primary care and a lack of diagnosis.

In other words, most people over the age of 65 with cognitive decline regularly saw their doctor, but they did not receive a diagnosis.

“The doctor cannot diagnose the patient or can retain the diagnosis of dementia,” suggests public health scientist Josh Martins-Caulfield of the University of Michigan.

“In practice, doctors often hesitate to diagnose dementia, by invoking reasons such as insufficient time with individual patients to carry out the screening process or not have specific dementia training. The discomfort of providing the diagnosis can also lead them to wait for patients or family members to raise concerns concerning memory issues rather than launching discussions proactively. “”

The study focused on 652 older adults in the county of Nueces who were subject to another care of another, generally a child or a spouse. From this group, 322 people – with a 76 -year -old median age – were considered a “probable dementia” by researchers.

When these 322 patients and their caregivers were interviewed, up to 84% said they had not received a formal diagnosis from their doctor.

The authors also noticed significant differences between ethnic groups. Among American Mexican participants with probable dementia, for example, almost 85% had not been informed by a doctor that they had dementia.

Non -Hispanic white participants with probable dementia, for their part, had received a diagnosis in 65% of cases.

Routine access to primary care could not explain the “substantial ethnic disparity”, but in the past, the Alzheimer’s association has found that a third of Hispanic and Latin American Americans are discriminated against during the search for care health. It is compared to only 9% of non -Hispanic white Americans.

Recent data comes from a single county in Texas, it is therefore not necessarily representative of the whole nation. In 2023, however, researchers from the University of Southern California used Medicare files to predict that out of the 8 million Americans who are currently experiencing light cognitive disorders, more than 90% do not know.

Today, most drugs available for Alzheimer’s patients cannot help manage their symptoms. Just a few rare recents have an impact on the progression of the disease. If it changes on the road, however, health care providers around the world will have bread for them.

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In 2021, researchers at McGill University in Canada warned that if new treatments for dementia have really proven to be safe and useful in the future, this could lead to a “demand tsunami” of diagnostics. The latest results suggest that many health systems can be fully prepared for the assault.

Last year, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a drug designed to treat the first symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease which show encouraging initial results.

The best results, however, tend to be when these drugs are administered in the early stages of the disease. A recent study of more than 200,000 clinicians in the United States estimated 99.9% of underdiagnosed light cognitive disorders in their patients.

In a way, a blood test would certainly be useful.

The study was published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.