Aging & Society: Eighth Interdisciplinary Conference

Abstract

Identifying variation in the demographics and residential areas of the incidence and prevalence for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) has public health applications for projecting the future burden of disease and for planning medical services. However, very few nationwide studies have been conducted on this topic in Asian countries. This study describes a secular trend in AD incidence and prevalence in Taiwan as well as assesses the disparity of demographics and urbanization on the incidence and prevalence of AD. The data of AD were acquired from the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database entries between 2004 and 2010. The calendar year, sex, and age-specific rates were standardized, and the differences of the demographics and urbanization on AD were assessed using Poisson regression analysis. Over seven years, the incidence of AD per 1,000 population was 4.9 in 2004 and 4.6 in 2010 with a stable trend (b＝-0.0078, p=0.0974). Conversely, the prevalence of AD significantly has increased from 3.2% in 2004 to 6.9% in 2010 (b＝0.1152, p<0.0001). Noticeably, the AD incidence and prevalence increased with age and were higher in women than in men. Also, significantly higher AD incidence and prevalence were noted in areas with more urbanization. Given the significant demographics and urbanization variations in AD incidence and prevalence, further studies are warranted to investigate whether such findings can be attributed to specific occupational and environmental factors most relevant to the incidence and prevalence of AD in Taiwan.