Dementia care
What we know and what the future holds
Louise Walker, research communications officer at the Alzheimer’s Society, discusses the scale of the problem, the progress being made in the field of dementia research and what future research has in store
Dementia devastates lives. It currently affects 850,000 people in the UK, a figure only set to rise; by 2021 one million people will be living with the condition and this is likely to soar to two million by 2051. Deaths from dementia are rising year on year, and it was recently announced that dementia is the leading cause of death in adults in England and Wales. Dementia also puts a huge financial burden on the NHS and indeed the taxpayer, costing £26 billion pounds per year.
Stark as this may sound, progress is being made in the fight against dementia, including in the field of dementia research. There are many reasons for us to be excited about what dementia research could achieve in 2017 and beyond. We remain determined to find a cure for dementia, and although this is still a long way to go, we are making progress every day.
Decades of underfunding have left dementia research lagging more than 20 years behind the progress seen in cancer research. With an ageing population and no new dementia drugs introduced in over a decade, the need to find treatments that can slow or stop disease progression is greater than ever.
Research
Last year was a mixed one in terms of improving our understanding of the role of the amyloid protein. Toxic clumps of this protein are found in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease and have long been thought of as a major cause of brain cell death.
The failure of one trial that targeted these amyloid clumps but promising early stage results from other trials have left us with a number of questions about the role of this protein. While understanding the role of amyloid remains a top priority in dementia research, we hope that 2017 will see
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We are making progress in the fight against dementia
a further widening of the scope of research into the underlying causes of dementia.
One area that is receiving an increased amount of focus is the role of the tau protein, another key hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease and some other forms of dementia. Our understanding of tau is further behind that of amyloid, but we do know that it forms toxic clumps known as tangles. These tangles are thought to cause damage to brain cells and the spread of tau tangles across the brain appears to happen at the same time as the progression of dementia symptoms.
Recent advances in brain scanning technology that allow us to spot tau will go a long way towards improving our understanding of the role of this protein and what its relationship is with amyloid. We also hope to hear more about research into potential treatments that target the tau protein, particularly those investigating a type of treatment called antibody therapy.
Treatment
Towards the end of August 2016, Biogen released data from the early stage trial of a new drug called aducanumab. Biogen had previously released promising looking data indicating that the drug could have an effect on memory. This new data showed that aducanumab is effective at removing the Alzheimer’s hallmark amyloid protein from the brain, an important step forwards in the search for a new treatment.
We will need to wait for the results of longer, larger, phase 3 trials to determine whether these promising early signs are indeed positive. There are also questions about the side effects of the drug, which included swelling in the brain. These side effects will need to be addressed during the larger trials.
Despite this promising progress, there were also some disappointments. There was much anticipation about a potential Alzheimer’s treatment called solanezumab, which was developed by Eli Lilly. The drug had failed in an earlier
www.thecarehomeenvironment .com • May 2017
©Alexander Raths/Fotolia
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