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Causes of dementia
Medical expert of the article
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
The incidence of dementia varies from 30.5 / 1000 per year in men to 48.2 / 1000 per year in women (Bachman, 1992). In Sweden, in persons aged 85-88 years, the incidence is 90.1 / 1000 per year (61.3 / 1000 in men and 102.7 / 1000 in women). The incidence of Alzheimer's disease is 36.3 / 1000 per year, vascular dementia is 39.0 / 1000 per year, other forms of dementia are 9.1 / 1000 per year.
The most common cause of dementia in the United States is Alzheimer's disease, followed by vascular dementia, dementia with Leia's bodies. Dementia can also be caused by other diseases: Parkinson's disease, HIV-encephalopathy, Pick's disease and other frontal temporal dementias, progressive supranuclear palsy, Kretzfeldt-Jakob disease, Gallervorden-Spatz disease, neurosyphilis, toxic brain damage (eg, alcoholic dementia). Cognitive impairment is also possible with mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, delirium. It is important to differentiate these states, because they have different prognosis and treatment.
The main causes of dementia are:
- Alzheimer's disease
- Pick-up disease
- Disease of diffuse Levi bodies
- Parkinson's disease
- Huntington's disease
- Progressive supranuclear palsy
- Multiple system atrophies
- Fahr disease
- Wilson-Konovalov's disease
- "Talamic" dementia
- Multi-infarct dementia
- Binswanger disease
- Normotensive hydrocephalus
- Alcoholism
- Encephalopathy in exogenous intoxications (carbon monoxide, lead, mercury, manganese, drugs)
- Schizophrenia
- Craniocerebral trauma (post-traumatic encephalopathy, subdural hematoma, dementia of boxers)
- Tumors of the brain (meningiomas, gliomas, metastases, carcinomatous meningitis), subdural hematoma
- Occlusal hydrocephalus
- Metabolic disorders (diseases of the thyroid, parathyroid, adrenal and pituitary, renal or hepatic insufficiency, etc.)
- Encephalopathy associated with infections (syphilis, postencephalitic dementia, Whipple disease, AIDS, Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease, subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, progressive leukoencephalopathy)
- Meningitis and encephalitis of any etiology
- Multiple sclerosis
- Leukodystrophy
- Nutritive encephalopathy (insufficiency of vitamin strongi, folic acid, pellagra, pernicious anemia, persistent vomiting during pregnancy)
- Hypoxic encephalopathy (including chronic pulmonary failure, paroxysmal heart rhythm disorders)
- Iatrogenic (anticholinergics, hypotensive, psychotropic, anticonvulsant, mixed)
- Pseudomodulation (depression).
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