J Korean Med Sci.  2014 Jul;29(7):903-912. 10.3346/jkms.2014.29.7.903.

Prevalence and Trends of Dementia in Korea: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

• Kim YJ
• Han JW
• So YS
• Seo JY
• Kim KY
• Kim KW

• KMID: 1789948
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.3346/jkms.2014.29.7.903

Abstract

Through a systematic review and meta-analysis of epidemiological studies on dementia, we assessed the prevalence of dementia and its subtypes-Alzheimer' disease (AD) and vascular dementia (VaD)-in Korea. We searched for epidemiological studies on dementia published in 1990-2013 using PubMed, Scopus, EMBASE, KoreaMed, KISS, and RiCH. Dementia prevalence in elderly patients (aged> or =65 yr) was 9.2% (95% confidence interval [CI], 8.2%-10.4%) from 11 studies, which was higher than those from Western and other Asian countries. AD was the most prevalent dementia type, with a prevalence of 5.7% (95% CI, 5.0%-6.4%) from 10 studies compared with 2.1% (95% CI, 1.6%-2.7%) for VaD from 9 studies. The age-specific prevalence of dementia approximately doubled with each 5.8-yr increase of age. Although a significant increasing trend of dementia prevalence was not observed, it increased slightly from 7.3% to 8.7% after 2005; AD prevalence increased after 1995 and VaD prevalence decreased after the early 2000s. The AD/VaD ratio increased from 1.96 in the early 1990s to 4.13 in the 2010s, similar to the worldwide ratio. Owing to this high prevalence in the aging population, dementia will impose significant economic burdens to Korean society.

Keyword

Dementia; Prevalence; Trends; Meta-Analysis; Korea

MeSH Terms

Age Factors
Alzheimer Disease/epidemiology
Asian Continental Ancestry Group
Databases, Factual
Dementia/*epidemiology
Dementia, Vascular/epidemiology
Humans
Prevalence
Quality Assurance, Health Care
Republic of Korea

Figure

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  Fig. 1 Summary of literature search.

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  Fig. 2 Forest plot of prevalence studies of dementia in the elderly Koreans.

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  Fig. 3 Time-trend of dementia prevalence in the elderly Koreans (1990-2013).

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  Fig. 4 Ratio of prevalence of Alzheimer dementia (AD) to vascular dementia (VaD) considering the survey year (β = 0.13, P = 0.021).

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