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Recent estimates suggesting that over half of Alzheimer's disease burden worldwide might be attributed to potentially modifiable risk factors do not take into account risk-factor non-independence. We aimed to provide specific estimates of preventive potential by accounting for the association between risk factors.

Using relative risks from existing meta-analyses, we estimated the population-attributable risk (PAR) of Alzheimer's disease worldwide and in the USA, Europe, and the UK for seven potentially modifiable risk factors that have consistent evidence of an association with the disease (diabetes, midlife hypertension, midlife obesity, physical inactivity, depression, smoking, and low educational attainment). The combined PAR associated with the risk factors was calculated using data from the Health Survey for England 2006 to estimate and adjust for the association between risk factors. The …