Lower socioeconomic status ‘triples risk of early-onset dementia’

Dementia is one of the biggest illnesses facing UK health infrastructure, with a study from last month suggesting that 1.7 million people in the UK could have the condition by 2040. Photograph: Andrew Matthews/PA

People from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are more than three times as likely to experience early-onset dementia, a study has found.

The study, published in the Lancet Healthy Longevity journal and conducted by researchers at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China, used UK BioBank data of more than 440,000 participants aged between 37 and 73.