• Magali Perquin, Nico Diederich, Jessica Pastore, Marie-Lise Lair, Saverio Stranges, Michel Vaillant, and MemoVie Group.
• Department of Population Health, Luxembourg Institute of Health (LIH), Strassen, Luxembourg.
• Plos One. 2015 Jan 1; 10 (9): e0138818.

ObjectivesThis study aimed to assess the prevalence of dementia and cognitive complaints in a cross-sectional sample of Luxembourg seniors, and to discuss the results in the societal context of high cognitive reserve resulting from multilingualism.MethodsA population sample of 1,377 people representative of Luxembourg residents aged over 64 years was initially identified via the national social insurance register. There were three different levels of contribution: full participation in the study, partial participation, and non-participation. We examined the profiles of these three different samples so that we could infer the prevalence estimates in the Luxembourgish senior population as a whole using the prevalence estimates obtained in this study.ResultsAfter careful attention to the potential bias and of the possibility of underestimation, we considered the obtained prevalence estimates of 3.8% for dementia (with corresponding 95% confidence limits (CL) of 2.8% and 4.8%) and 26.1% for cognitive complaints (CL = [17.8-34.3]) as trustworthy.ConclusionBased on these findings, we postulate that high cognitive reserve may result in surprisingly low prevalence estimates of cognitive complaints and dementia in adults over the age of 64 years, which thereby corroborates the longer disability-free life expectancy observed in the Luxembourg population. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to report such Luxembourgish public health data.

26 keywords...

hide…