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NEW DELHI, Mar 9: More than 10 million older adults aged 60 or over in India may have dementia, comparable to the prevalence rates for countries such as the US and the UK, according to a first-of-its-kind study.
The research, published in the journal Neuroepidemiology, used an artificial intelligence (AI) technique known as semi-supervised machine learning to analyse data from 31,477 older adults.
The international team of researchers found that the prevalence rate of dementia in adults aged 60 or over in India could be 8.44 per cent-equating to 10.08 million older adults in the country.
This compares to prevalence rates recorded in similar age groups of 8.8 per cent in the US, 9 per cent in the UK and between 8.5 and 9 per cent in Germany and France, they said. The prevalence of dementia was greater for those who were older, were females, received no education, and lived in rural areas, the researchers found.
"Our research was based on the first and only nationally representative aging study in India with more than 30,000 participating older adults in the country," said Haomiao Jin, co-author of the study and Lecturer in Health Data Sciences at the University of Surrey, UK.
"AI has a unique strength in interpreting large and complex data like this, and our research found that the prevalence of dementia may be higher than prior estimates from local samples," Jin said in a statement.
The research team from the University of Surrey, University of Southern California, University of Michigan, both in the US, and All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi developed an AI learning model.
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