Explore Business Standard
Don’t miss the latest developments in business and finance.
Use of sleep medication and inability to fall asleep quickly are associated with an increased risk of developing dementia over a 10 year period, according to a study. The research, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, found a significant link between three measures of sleep disturbance and the risk for developing dementia, a neurodegenerative disease. The researchers associate sleep-initiation insomnia (trouble falling asleep within 30 minutes) and sleep medication use with higher risk for developing dementia. They also found that people who reported having sleep-maintenance insomnia (trouble falling back to sleep after waking) were less likely to develop dementia over the course of the study. "We expected sleep-initiation insomnia and sleep medication usage to increase dementia risk, but we were surprised to find sleep-maintenance insomnia decreased dementia risk," explained lead investigator Roger Wong, an Assistant Professor at SUNY Upstate Medical Universit
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