Ageing, epidemiologic transitions, and dementia in fourth world Aboriginal Australia

Australian Aboriginal people have high mid-life mortality rates from systemic diseases and a 17-year life expectancy gap compared with the general Australian population. Remote Aboriginal Australians in the Kimberley Region have recently been shown to have the highest recorded rates of dementia in the world literature. We reviewed epidemiologic transitions in Aboriginal and non-Indigenous Australians to examine why urban Aboriginal people, who form the large majority, have high systemic disease rates, with the hypothesis that they also have high dementia prevalence rates.