Prevalence of Dementia and Associated Risk Factors: A Population-Based Study in the Philippines

The Philippines is experiencing rapid demographic aging and with it, the dementia epidemic. Prevalence of dementia and associated risk factors have not been studied in the Philippines.

The study aimed to provide a reliable estimate of dementia prevalence and identify associated risk factors in the Filipino population.

1460 participants 60 years and older were randomly selected from the Marikina City's senior registry. A multidisciplinary team (nurse, psychologist, and neurologist) administered a comprehensive assessment to the study population: health history, neurological examination, Geriatric Depression Scale, Neuropsychiatric Inventory, Disability Assessment for Dementia, Alzheimer's Disease 8, and Clinical Dementia Rating Scale. The neurologist analyzed all clinical data to diagnose dementia based on the DSM-IV criteria, Alzheimer's Disease (AD) on the NINCDS-ADRDA criteria, vascular dementia (VaD) on the Hachinski Ischemic Scale, cognitive impairment no dementia (CIND) on a CDR score of 0.5 and not fulfilling DSM-IV criteria for dementia. Risk factors were correlated with dementia prevalence using multivariate binary logistic regression.

1460 persons were randomly selected. 1367 agreed to participate and underwent all assessments. The response rate was 93.6%. Dementia prevalence was found to be 10.6% (95% CI 9.0 to 12.4) with the breakdown 85.5% AD, 11.7% VaD, and 2.7% other dementias. In this population, 82.0% of men and 70.4% of women had at least one cardiovascular risk factor (hypertension, diabetes, dyslipidemia, smoking), which was associated with VaD prevalence but not AD.

The prevalence of dementia, CIND, and cardiovascular risk factors are high in the Philippines.