Dementia can be delayed without blowing health budget

What if we could improve the lives of older Australians, and their carers, by delaying dementia, all within the current health spending envelope? New research says it’s possible.

An online program to combat dementia that includes cognitive training is showing good results. Picture: iStock

Older Australians’ risk of dementia can be reduced and their quality of life improved by personalised online coaching targeting physical activity, nutrition and cognitive training at no additional cost to the healthcare system, new research finds.

And that’s before the longer term cost benefits of a person living longer without dementia are considered, the study says.

The research findings involving a trial of more than 6000 Australians aged 55 to 77 add weight to the growing view that dementia can be managed, its lead author Henry Brodaty says.

“We are at a turning point in the fight against Alzheimer’s disease. The science is clear, dementia is not inevitable, and we now have the tools to delay onset and slow progression,” Professor Brodaty, a clinician, researcher and co-director of UNSW’s Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing says.

Professor Henry Brodaty says the science is clear that ‘dementia is not inevitable’. Picture: Supplied

The study, published in The Journal of Prevention of Alzheimer’s Disease, split the participants, all of whom had at least two modifiable risk factors for dementia into two groups of 3000.

One group received the Maintain Your Brain program, a personalised schedule of online coaching in physical and cognitive activity, nutrition (via a Mediterranean diet) and depression or anxiety management. The other groups received basic health information.

Over three years it found that “the delivery of MYB (was) effective in improving cognitive outcomes and dementia risk”.

It also showed the cost of the program was almost completely matched by the savings in health costs over three years. And while it noted the reduced risk of dementia for people in the longer term, it did not attempt to extrapolate that into future economic benefits, preferring to wait until actual data was available.

“In the long run, the program will deliver additional benefits on cognitive, physical, mental and social health that will more than pay back its costs,” Professor Brodaty says.

Addressing the National Press Club about the findings on Wednesday, Professor Brodaty said the capacity to delay dementia by a year or even longer could improve the quality of life for older Australians and their carers, as well as potentially boosting national productivity as they continued longer in work.

“With retirement ages rising and older adults participating more in the workforce, supporting cognitive health is a smart economic strategy,” he said, in pressing for funding to allow the MYB program to be rolled out more broadly.

Professor Brodaty said there was much to be hopeful about in how dementia, which already afflicts more than 400,000 Australians and is expected to grow to 850,000 by 2058 as the population ages, was managed into the future.

These included increasingly sophisticated and less intrusive diagnostic tests, including blood tests, that could help to detect the onset of dementia earlier.

But research was key, and more funding for dementia research and programs was needed, he said, noting the $166m funding for the National Dementia Action Plan was “too little for what Australia needs”.