Another day, another alarming brain-related story hits the news:
Dementia is striking victims earlier and death rates are soaring
In fact the study in question doesn’t show that. The paper, published in Surgical Neurological International (see also) is from British researchers Colin Pritchard and Emily Rosenorn-Lanng.
The authors show that the number of deaths attributed to neurological diseases (including dementia) have risen in recent years. Using World Health Organization (WHO) data from twenty-one industrialized countries, Pritchard and Rosenorn-Lanng found that the rate of neurological deaths in the over 75s more than doubled (112% increase) in twenty years, 1990 to 2010.
That’s the finding. At first sight, this does seem a “Cause for Concern”, as the authors put it in the paper’s title. Neurological diseases are killing twice as many people! But that’s just one interpretation of these results.
[For more of this story go to http://blogs.discovermagazine....-panic/#.Vcpf9flVikq]
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