THE extent of dementia in the developing world has been vastly underestimated because the standard diagnostic technique misses cognitive impairments in poorly educated people. So says Martin Prince of King’s College London, who has .
Previous studies, based on a clutch of cognitive tests known as , suggested that dementia was less common in lower income countries. But when Prince and his colleagues tested people over the age of 65 in seven low and middle-income countries using their own method – called 10/66 – they found on average twice as much dementia as when they used DSM-IV, with a prevalence of 5.6 per cent in rural China and 11.7 per cent in the Dominican Republic (The Lancet, ).
The 10/66 method avoids tests that rely on mathematics and reading, with more emphasis on reports from family and friends.
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