Over 10 million older adults in India likely have dementia: AI study
New Delhi (PTI): More than 10 million older adults aged 60 or over in India may have dementia, comparable to the prevalence rates for countries such as the US and the UK, according to a first-of-its-kind study.
The research, published in the journal Neuroepidemiology, used an artificial intelligence (AI) technique known as semi-supervised machine learning to analyse data from 31,477 older adults.
The international team of researchers found that the prevalence rate of dementia in adults aged 60 or over in India could be 8.44 per cent -- equating to 10.08 million older adults in the country.
This compares to prevalence rates recorded in similar age groups of 8.8 per cent in the US, 9 per cent in the UK and between 8.5 and 9 per cent in Germany and France, they said.
The prevalence of dementia was greater for those who were older, were females, received no education, and lived in rural areas, the researchers found.
"Our research was based on the first and only nationally representative aging study in India with more than 30,000 participating older adults in the country," said Haomiao Jin, co-author of the study and Lecturer in Health Data Sciences at the University of Surrey, UK.
"AI has a unique strength in interpreting large and complex data like this, and our research found that the prevalence of dementia may be higher than prior estimates from local samples," Jin said in a statement.
The research team from the University of Surrey, University of Southern California, University of Michigan, both in the US, and All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi developed an AI learning model.
The model was trained on data, which consisted of 70 per cent labelled dataset with dementia diagnoses from a novel online consensus.
The remaining 30 per cent of the data was reserved as a test set to assess the AI's predictive accuracy.
The AI taught itself to predict dementia status for unlabelled observations without dementia diagnoses in the dataset.
"As we are seeing with this research, AI has a huge potential to discover patterns in complex data, improving our understanding of how diseases impact people across very different communities to support the development of precision medical interventions to save lives," Professor Adrian Hilton, Director of the University of Surrey's Institute for People-Centered AI, added.
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Pawan Khera denied anticipatory bail in passport case: Cong stands up for senior member
New Delhi: The Congress party has stood by Pawan Khera, the Chairman of the party’s Media and Publicity Department, expressing confidence that regardless of hurdles like politics of threat and intimidation, justice would emerge victorious.
Khera was denied anticipatory bail by the Gauhati High Court on Friday in the case filed against him by Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma's wife Riniki Bhuyan Sarma for alleging that she possessed not only multiple passports but also undisclosed properties abroad.
Senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh has said in a post in Hindi on his ‘X’ account, “The entire Indian National Congress stands in solidarity with Pawan Khera, the Chairman of its Media and Publicity Department. The process to challenge the Gauhati High Court’s decision in the Supreme Court is underway.” In the post, which he put up on Friday, Ramesh has added, “We are confident that justice will prevail over the politics of threats, intimidation, and harassment.”
Bhuyan Sarma has lodged also an FIR seeking legal action against Pawan Khera for his allegations that she possesses passports of three countries and owns a company in the US, which had invested Rs. 50,000 crores. She has filed criminal cases against the Congress leader at the Guwahati Crime Branch Police Station under various sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS).
