According to the first study of its kind, the number of people living with dementia will triple to over 150 million by the year 2050.
The experts described the data as shocking and said it was clear that dementia presented a major and rapidly growing threat to future health and social care systems.
The rise in cases will be due to population growth and aging, according to US researchers. They said that several risk factors for dementia, including high blood sugar and smoking, would fuel the increase.
The prevalence of dementia is projected to be reduced by over 6 million cases by the year 2050. An extra 6.8 million dementia cases are expected to be caused by trends in Obesity, high blood sugar and smoking.
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The study found that Viagra could be used to treat Alzheimer's disease.
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The Global Burden of Disease study is the first to provide forecasting estimates for adults aged 40 and older. The findings are published in a book.
The largest growth in dementia cases will be in the Middle East and north Africa. The countries with the largest rises are the United Arab Emirates, which is projected to increase by 795%, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which is projected to increase by 11084%).
The study suggests that the largest estimated increases are in the high-income Asia Pacific and western Europe. Japan is expected to have the smallest increase in the world.
The number of dementia cases in the UK is projected to increase by 75% by the year 2050.
Hilary Evans, the chief executive of Alzheimer's Research UK, who was not involved in the study, said the figures showed the shocking scale of dementia across the world.
She said that there needs to be concerted global action to avoid this number tripling. Dementia can affect families and networks of friends and loved ones. The case to governments across the world to do more to protect lives now and in the future is strengthened by the personal cost of dementia.
Dementia is one of the major causes of disability and dependency among older people, and is expected to cost more than $1tn in 2019.
Alzheimer's is not an inevitable consequence of aging. Up to 40% of cases could be prevented or delayed if exposure was eliminated to 12 known risk factors.
The researchers behind the new study called for more aggressive prevention efforts to reduce dementia risk through lifestyle factors such as education, diet and exercise, along with research to discover effective disease-modifying treatments and new modifiable risk factors to reduce the future burden of disease.
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington's lead author said that to have the greatest impact, we need to reduce exposure to the leading risk factors in each country. For most, this means scaling up locally appropriate, low-cost programmes that support healthier lifestyles.
The authors acknowledged that their analysis was limited by a lack of high-quality data in several parts of the world and by studies using different methodologies and definitions of dementia.
