SwissDEM - Dementia burden, trends, and risk factors in three Swiss cantons

Start date: 01.10.2019 End date: 31.03.2024

Data were collected in the Canton of Ticino and the Canton of Zurich (note: data collection was originally planned also in the Canton of Geneva but could not be completed due to COVID-19-related restrictions).

SwissDEM is the first epidemiological study on dementia prevalence, burden, and its determinants among older adults in Ticino, Switzerland, complemented with comparative data collected in the Canton of Zurich. Funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF, grant no. 320030_184794; PI: Prof. Emiliano Albanese, Institute of Public Health, Università della Svizzera italiana), the study was a multi-site, one-phase, population-based, cross-sectional survey of adults aged 65 and older, randomly sampled through the Swiss Federal Office of Statistics with age- and sex-stratification. Assessments cover cognitive function (10/66 short dementia diagnostic schedule, CSI-D), mood and affective symptoms (EURO-D), functional status, social networks, caregiving arrangements, and socioeconomic circumstances, collected via structured dyadic interviews with participants and informants.

Preliminary analyses confirmed that the achieved samples in both Ticino and Zurich retained the socio-demographic characteristics of their respective target populations, supporting the representativeness of the study samples, encompassing both community-dwelling and institutionalised older adults in Ticino. Published findings from the SwissDEM data include associations between multilingualism/language proficiency and cognitive functioning (Pacifico et al., 2023, BMC Geriatrics), between serologically confirmed COVID-19 infection and cognitive functioning in community-dwelling older adults (Sabatini et al., 2023, Frontiers in Neurology), and between SARS-CoV-2 infection and cognition in community-dwelling and nursing home residents in southern Switzerland (Rizzi et al., 2023, Brain, Behavior, & Immunity - Health). Further analyses examined subjective cognitive decline and its association with disability and depressive symptoms (Pacifico et al., 2022, Frontiers in Psychiatry). A manuscript reporting overall dementia prevalence estimates from the SwissDEM study has been submitted to BMC Public Health (Pacifico et al., submitted).