Dementia Life Expectancy Is Now Longer Than Ever

People diagnosed with dementia are living longer than before—thanks to advancements in the early identification of the condition and improvements in treatments and tailored care.

This is the conclusion of a study by an international team of researchers which analyzed data on more than 1.2 million people aged over 60 living with dementia across the globe.

“Dementia is a global public health priority,” said paper author and statistician professor Hao Luo of the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, in a statement.

“Knowledge of survival after the diagnosis of dementia is important for people living with dementia and their family members for making informed decisions about the subsequent care arrangement.”

It is also important, Luo continued, in helping doctors to improve their care and for policy makers who need to assess dementia’s impact on health and social care services.

Data analyzed for the study was collected between 2000 and 2018 from within eight regions around the world: Finland, Germany, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Ontario, South Korea, Taiwan and the United Kingdom.

Of these, Canada (covering Ontario), Finland, Germany, South Korea and the United Kingdom all either have, or are developing, national dementia strategies.

The researchers found that in five of those regions (accounting for 84 percent of the subjects), people diagnosed with dementia now have a lower risk of premature death than in the past. The exceptions were Finland and Germany—from which the data was inconclusive—and New Zealand.

“We were surprised to observe a steady increase in mortality risk in New Zealand between 2014 and 2018,” said Luo.

“We later found that this coincided with a national effort to shift the diagnosis and management of uncomplicated dementia to primary care, to free up specialist services.”

This change, Luo explained, meant that people living with dementia are more likely to reach advanced stages of the disease before presenting to hospitals with such.

This, she added, results in “a higher risk of mortality following the first hospital record of dementia diagnosis.”

With this initial study complete, Luo says that she is planning to look at the interplay between dementia and other medical conditions.

“To analyze multinational data using a standardized approach, some compromises were made—including not accounting for the impact of comorbid conditions on dementia survival,” Luo explained.

“One of my future research directions is to understand the patterns of comorbidity and how comorbidities affect survival among persons with dementia.”

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Reference

Luo, H., Koponen, M., Roethlein, C., Becker, C., Bell, J. S., Beyene, K., Chai, Y., Chan, A. H. Y., Chui, C. S. L., Haenisch, B., Hartikainen, S., Hsu, A. T., Ilomaki, J., Kim, J. H., Knapp, M., Kunkel, E., Lai, E. C.-C., Lau, K. K., Lau, W. C. Y., … Wong, I. C. K. (2025). A multinational cohort study of trends in survival following dementia diagnosis. Communications Medicine, 5(1), 203. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43856-025-00923-6