Epidemiologia da Demência e da Doença de Alzheimer em Portugal: Estimativas da Prevalência e dos Encargos Financeiros com a Medicação

Abstract

<strong>Introduction:</strong> The incidence and prevalence of global dementia and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) increase with age, almost doubling every five years after the sixth decade of life. Demographic aging is a reality in Portugal, being expectable that the number of dementia cases also increases. Even so, dementia-epidemiological data in Portugal is scarce and cost-of-illness studies are almost inexistent. Our aims were to obtain up-to-date information about the prevalence of dementia/ Alzheimer’s disease in Portugal, to estimate the<br />number of cases effectively diagnosed as Alzheimer’s disease and to determine illness-costs with specific dementia treatment.<br /><strong>Material and Methods:</strong> The numbers of age-adjusted prevalence of dementia obtained for Occidental Europe (Alzheimer’s Disease International study), where applied to the resident population in Portugal (2013). Estimations related to diagnosis and treatment-costs were based in data provided by the Intercontinental Marketing Services Health (IMSH) – 2013.<br /><strong>Results:</strong> The estimated number of Portuguese people with dementia among those aged ≥ 60 years, is 160287, representing 5.91% of this population-stratum. Knowing Alzheimer’s disease is responsible for 50-70% of all cases, we might conclude there are between 80144 and 112201 patients. According to IMSH-data, 76250 receive anti-dementia drugs and the costs of this kind of medication is 37 M€/year.<br /><strong>Conclusions:</strong> As a consequence of the demographic aging, also the number of dementia cases increases. Aparentely, not all Alzheimer’s disease patients receive the recommended medication, suggesting this condition is still under-diagnosed. However, figures indicate a positive progression with an increment of treated cases and a reduction of medication-costs.