Prevalence and Incidence of Alzheimer's Disease in Europe: A Meta-analysis

Background: A disease of unknown aetiology, Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common type of dementia. As the elderly population grows worldwide, the number of patients with AD also increases rapidly. The aim of this meta-analysis is to evaluate the prevalence and incidence of AD in Europe.

Methodology: We conducted a literature search on Medline, Scopus, and CINAHL Complete using the keywords «Alzheimer», «Alzheimer's disease», and «AD» combined with «prevalence», «incidence», and «epidemiology». A Bayesian random effects model with 95% credible intervals was used. The I statistic was applied to assess heterogeneity.

Results: The prevalence of Alzheimer's disease in Europe was estimated at 5.05% (95% CI, 4.73-5.39). The prevalence in men was 3.31% (95% CI, 2.85-3.80) and in women, 7.13% (95% CI, 6.56-7.72), and increased with age. The incidence of Alzheimer's disease in Europe was 11.08 per 1000 person-years (95% CI, 10.30-11.89). Broken down by sex, it was 7.02 per 1000 person-years (95% CI, 6.06-8.05) in men and 13.25 per 1000 person-years (95% CI, 12.05-14.51) in women; again these rates increased with age.

Conclusions: The results of our meta-analysis allow a better grasp of the impact of this disease in Europe.