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A comment on Mediterranean diet may lower dementia risk by a quarter, study suggests. Parent comment

Re:Mediterranean diet may lower dementia risk by a quarter, ... by adhesive_wombat on Tuesday March 14, 2023 @08:47AM (#35150604)
Bulgaria and Albania at completely opposite ends of the table with a 50-fold rate difference between them makes me go "hmm".

Or Singapore being right at the very bottom, 40 times less that Malaysia, and 20 times less than Japan.

It feels like this might be a table of countries that do and do not often include dementia as a cause of death.

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Re:Mediterranean diet may lower dementia risk by a quarter, ... by pfortuny on Tuesday March 14, 2023 @10:26AM (#35152042)
Well, looking at extremes is not the best way to analyze general data.
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Re:Mediterranean diet may lower dementia risk by a quarter, ... by adhesive_wombat on Tuesday March 14, 2023 @11:09AM (#35152744)
Do you genuinely think a 50-fold difference in dementia incidence sounds remotely plausible?

That would probably be the strongest incidence gradient signal in medical history. Dementia research would be laser-focussed on the Albania-North Macedonia-Bulgaria axis and the Singapore-Malaysia axis as they'd be near-ideal comparative populations.

If the data isn't compatible, the table doesn't mean much at all, since it has merged reporting bias with the actual incidence rates.

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