A report newly published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that the burden of Alzheimer’s disease and related forms of dementia in the United States will double by the year 2060.

Share on Pinterest By 2060, the number of African American people living with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias will have reached 2.2 million.

About 5.7 million individuals in the United States are living with Alzheimer’s disease, according to the Alzheimer’s Association.

This neurodegenerative disease is one of the leading causes of disability and the sixth-leading cause of mortality in the U.S.

With annual healthcare costs of more than $250 billion, the disease also puts a significant strain on the nation’s healthcare system.

Additionally, unpaid caregivers spend over 18 billion hours tending to those living with Alzheimer’s.

Age is the most significant risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease. Thus, as the population of the United States — along with that of the world — increases, it is important to ask: how many people will develop this form of dementia in the coming decades?

Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) set out to investigate, and they published their findings in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association.

Researcher Kevin Matthews, who currently works at the CDC’s National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion in Atlanta, GA, is the first author of the paper.

He and his colleagues also looked at race and ethnicity, which are two “important demographic risk factors” for Alzheimer’s. This made the study the first one to predict Alzheimer’s prevalence based on race and ethnicity.