Dementia certifications rose steeply with age in Argentina
Argentina recorded 47.7 new dementia certifications per 100,000 adults aged 40 and older in 2022; these measured disability registration, not disease onset.
Our read
Populations- Studied:
- Cohort study of Argentine adults aged 40 years and older, against adults aged 40–45 years
- What changed:
- Dementia certifications rose from 0.9 per 100,000 at ages 40–45 years to 479.5 per 100,000 at ages ≥95 years
- The catch:
- Certification delays, especially in younger patients, shift recorded ages away from clinical onset
Editor of record: Boris Djordjevic · AgingResearch.News
Adults aged 40 and older in Argentina were the population covered by an observational study of national disability registry entries from 2016 to 2022. Researchers counted new entries listing dementia as the primary cause of disability. They excluded 2020 and 2021 from trend analyses because the pandemic disrupted reporting.
In 2022, new certifications ranged from 0.9 per 100,000 people aged 40–45 to nearly 480 per 100,000 among those aged 95 and older. Women had higher rates than men before adjustment for age, but similar rates afterward. Age-adjusted certification rates rose over time. However, accounting for the registry’s expansion reduced the estimated upward trend by 45%. The authors described certification rates as a lower bound for new dementia cases.
Why it matters
Dementia surveillance helps health systems plan care as populations age. The authors concluded that disability registries can support planning where national clinical registries are unavailable.
Caveats
The registry recorded certification rather than disease onset, and inclusion depended on voluntary applications, care access and benefit eligibility. Among adults 65 and older, comparisons assuming regional cohort rates applied in Argentina suggested that it captured only 6–12% of expected new cases.
From the paper
- Result
ASI rates increased significantly with age (β = 0.53, 95% CI = 0.44–0.61, p < 0.01), rising from 0.9 cases per 100,000 among individuals aged 40–45 years to 479.5 cases per 100,000 in those aged ≥95 years.
- Events by group
The substantially higher relative contribution of non-Alzheimer neurodegenerative dementias to the early-onset group (14.5% vs. 7.2% in late-onset) is consistent with the recognized etiological heterogeneity of younger-onset cases and is discussed further below.
- Limitation
First, registry-based certification rates reflect administrative rather than clinical ascertainment, and the requirement for documented functional impairment biases the registry toward moderate-to-severe cases; variable delay between symptom onset, diagnosis …
Quoted word for word from the full text on PubMed Central.
The paper
Amsterdam Neuroscience; Universidade de São Paulo
Neuroepidemiology, Jul 16, 2026, Open access
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