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.
For the analysis of early-onset dementia, the study looked at people aged under 60 who did not have prevalent dementia symptoms, while the analysis of late-onset dementia looked at people aged 65 or older at the end of the research period. The research looked at the data of UK Biobank participants between 2007 and 2010, and later followed up in 2022.
The study, authored by Rui Li and colleagues, collected data of these individuals’ household income, highest education qualification and employment status in order to determine their socioeconomic status. The data also looked at the extent of a participant’s healthy lifestyle assessed through a score that looked at smoking status, alcohol consumption, physical activity and diet.
The results found that individuals of a lower socioeconomic status had a three-times-higher risk of developing early-onset dementia in comparison to their counterparts from a higher socioeconomic background. Of these results, less than 12% of cases could be explained by lifestyle factors, suggesting that individuals from a lower socioeconomic background living a healthier lifestyle wouldn’t necessarily mitigate the risk of developing 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. In the UK, about 900,000 people are living with dementia, while more than 70,800 are living with early-onset dementia. Worldwide, studies have suggested that about 3.9 million people aged between 30 and 64 have early-onset dementia, with 370,000 people newly diagnosed each year. Early-onset dementia is when a person experiences dementia symptoms under the age of 65.
The research also found that people from a lower socioeconomic background who lived an unhealthy lifestyle had a 440% higher risk of developing early-onset dementia compared with those from a higher socioeconomic background who lived a healthy lifestyle. It was also found that that socioeconomic status and lifestyle factors had a stronger association with early-onset dementia compared with late onset dementia.
The authors of the study said their research was among the first to examine the link between socioeconomic status, healthy lifestyle factors and early-onset dementia.
Although the study demonstrated the link between early-onset dementia and socioeconomic status, the research was limited by the fact that the sample was limited in regards to ethnic diversity, as more than 85% of participants were from a European background.
Tommaso Filippini, a public health researcher who was not involved in the study, said the finding confirmed “the importance of promoting healthy lifestyles from a young age, along with the independent role of factors including socioeconomic status in early-onset dementia and overall dementia incidence”.
He added: “The findings suggest that efforts to reduce social disparities are strongly warranted to decrease dementia incidence … this study highlights that both social disparities and unhealthy lifestyles could have detrimental effects on overall dementia risk.”
