EDITORIAL Prevention of dementia should start 20 years

This editorial refers to ‘Predictive utility of the Framing-ham general cardiovascular disease risk profile for cogni-tive function: evidence from the Whitehall II study’†, by F. Kaffashian et al., on page 2326 Modern medicine has made tremendous progress. The conse-quence is a steep increase in life expectancy, not only in developed countries, but also in countries such as India and China. Mortality and morbidity of major vascular diseases such as myocardial infarc-tion and stroke are improving in individual patients. Increasing age in a population leads to an almost exponential increase in the prevalence of dementia. Dementia will be the major issue for the next 50 years to come, on the level of both the individual and his or her caregivers and social and medical systems.1 Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause, followed by vas-cular dementia. Vascular dementia is a small vessel disease of th