Dementia

New research may help explain why people with type 2 diabetes are more likely to develop dementia.

The findings could help identify risk factors for dementia in people with type 2 diabetes and inform interventions to help prevent or delay the condition. The Imperial College London research emphasises the importance of carefully managing cardiometabolic factors such as blood pressure, cholesterol and glucose levels from the earliest stage.  The research, funded by Diabetes UK, analysed ‘cardiometabolic factors’ – such as blood pressure, blood sugars and cholesterol levels – in people with type 2 diabetes across two decades. The team identified changes in these factors during this period that were associated with developing dementia in later life.

Two world-renowned former rugby stars have joined with Alan Shearer in stepping up the fight against dementia in sport. 

Shane Williams, the all-time record try scorer for Wales, and World Cup-winning England lock Ben Kay are among 50 former elite rugby players to have backed the prevent PREVENT:RFC project, the latest phase of the Sport United Against Dementia campaign. 

A potential treatment for dementia could be designed on the back of new findings that show the benefits of reducing toxic gas levels in the brain.

The study analysed the impact of reducing the levels in the brain of hydrogen sulfide (H2S), which is potentially harmful to neurons. Researchers found that H2S was blocking the activity of some cells' potassium channels, which allow electrically charged atoms to pass through. This caused an increase in activity when these pathways were disrupted and researchers believe this overactivity is a cause of cell death.

Alzheimer’s Research UK describes dementia as ‘a group of symptoms that occur when brain cells stop working properly.’

Because of this broad definition, dementia can undertake many different forms. Current research has discovered the condition has over 100 manifestations, all of which are progessive.

People who sleep six hours or less each night in their 50s and 60s appear to be more likely to develop dementia later in life, new research has revealed. 

Those who persistently experienced lack of sleep were roughly 30 per cent more likely to develop dementia, compared to those with normal sleep duration, a study led by UCL and INSERM researchers found.  “Sleep problems are known to occur in people with dementia, but it remains unclear whether sleep duration in midlife affects the risk of developing dementia at older ages,” says lead author Dr Séverine Sabia. “Here, by using a very long follow-up period, we have found that short duration sleep in midlife, assessed more than 25 years before mean age at dementia onset, is associated with dementia risk in late life.

Powerful algorithms used by Netflix, Amazon and Facebook can 'predict' the biological language of neurodegenerative diseases, scientists have found.

Big data produced during decades of research was fed into a computer language model to see if artificial intelligence (AI) can make more advanced discoveries than humans. Academics from St John's College, University of Cambridge, found the machine-learning technology could decipher the 'biological language' of cancer and neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Huntington’s. Their groundbreaking study could be used in the future to 'correct the grammatical mistakes inside cells that cause disease’.

A significant proportion of dementia deaths in England and Wales may be due to socio-economic deprivation, new research has revealed. 

Such circumstances are also associated with deaths at a younger age due to dementia, as well as poorer access to accurate diagnosis also being uncovered.  The research, led by Queen Mary University of London, examined Office for National Statistics mortality data for England and Wales, and found that in 2017, 14,837 excess dementia deaths were attributable to deprivation, equating to 21.5 per cent of all dementia deaths that year.  The team also found that the effect of this association appears to be increasing over time.

Eating processed meat has been linked with an increased risk of developing dementia - although unprocessed red meat could be protective against the disease.

In a new study of 500,000 people, it was found that consuming a 25g serving of processed meat a day, the equivalent to one rasher of bacon, is associated with a 44 per cent increased risk of dementia. But the findings also showed that eating some unprocessed red meat, such as beef, pork or veal, could be protective, as people who consumed 50g a day were 19 per cent less likely to develop dementia.