The Alzheimer's Research United Kingdom warned of a looming national crisis as it was found out that one in three people born this year will suffer from some type of dementia at some stage in their lives. As reported in Independent UK, the report says that a third or around 32 per cent of people born in the United Kingdom will suffer from mental illness later in life.
Researchers at the independent Office of Health Economics (OHE) was commissioned by Alzheimer's Research UK to conduct the study and they were forced to warn health services with the possible influx of patients.
Head of policy at Alzheimer's Research UK, Dr. Matthew Norton told the Independent in an interview:
"The dementia related health services are creaking as it is, and we already have a crisis in social care. As rates increase it is only going to exert more pressure on an already troubled system."
Currently, there are 850,000 people with dementia in the UK. This is projected to increase to over one million by 2025, and double to two million by 2051. This latest findings show the potential crisis caused by an aging population. More so, the study found out that around 37 per cent of women and 27 per cent of men born this year will be affected. These results were released at the World Alzheimer's Day.
The study used mathematical formulate to combine life expectancy estimates with projections for the frequency of dementia at different ages. The figure could be even higher as the results were "potentially conservative", study did not include cases below the age of 60.
According to Dr. Norton, "the only way to make a big difference to numbers" was to substantially increase the funding for dementia research". Cancer research is currently attracting a lot of millions of funding leaving Alzheimer's research desperately underfunded. Additionally, there is no known cure for the disease. There are only a number of medicines available for Alzheimer's treatment. Most patients rely on unpaid family carers or long-term hospital admission.
According to the researchers, a treatment that can delay the disease by five years can create a great decrease of dementia cases. It is expected that dementia can be decreased by a third with this strategy.
