COVID-19 Study Impact

The Covid-19 pandemic has caused us to temporarily pause all PREVENT Dementia study visits. The team remain active in continuing to plan for when we can safely re-open our doors to participants and begin welcoming our volunteers back for repeat study assessments.

We are working closely with clinical research teams across all our sites to continually review the situation alongside advice received from government and institutions.

Once it is safe to do so we look forward to inviting our West London group back for the very first of our Visit 3 study time-points, a very exciting milestone for the research! We will also continue to approach all PREVENT participants from our Edinburgh, Cambridge, Oxford and Dublin sites to return for their Visit 2 assessments, around 2 years on first entering the study. We appreciate that timelines may need to be adjusted as a result of this study pause and we thank all of our dedicated volunteers for their patience in these unusual times.

Our face-to-face study visits may necessarily be on hold for now but our momentum to understand the early stage of neurodegenerative diseases and risk factors for dementia will not slow. The PREVENT team continue to work hard analysing all the high quality data collected in the research to date.

We will keep all of our participants up to date as soon as we have any news to share. In the meantime, if you have any questions at all, please do not hesitate to get in touch.

As we are currently working from home, the best way to reach us is by email – lothian.dementiaprevention@nhs.net 

If you prefer you can call us on 0131 651 7661 and leave a message. The team will respond to all messages as quickly as possible.

Thank you to all our volunteers for your valuable commitment to preventing dementia.

Stay safe,

Team PREVENT

 

 

 

Support While You Shop

Did you know that whenever you buy anything online – from your weekly shop to renewing your car insurance – you could be raising free donations for PREVENT via the easyfundraising initiative?

It won’t cost you a penny extra and there are over 4,000 shops and sites signed up including eBay, Argos, John Lewis, ASOS, Booking.com and M&S.

To help support PREVENT, all you need to do is:

1. Go to www.easyfundraising.org.uk/causes/prevent and join for free.

2. Every time you shop online, go to easyfundraising first to find the site you want, then shop as normal.

3. After you’ve checked out, the retailer will make a donation to PREVENT at no extra cost to you whatsoever!

There are no catches or hidden charges and all money raised will make a huge difference to the  PREVENT Dementia Programme.

Thank you for your support!

 

Hippocampal Subfield Volumes in Middle-Aged Adults at Risk of Dementia

Anna McKeever, Alvar Paris, James Cullen, Lawrence Hayes, Craig Ritchie, Karen Ritchie, Adam Waldman, Katie Wells, Albert Busza, Isabelle Carriere, John O’Brien

Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease. 2020

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3233/JAD-200238

Summary

One abnormality commonly found in the brains of those living with Alzheimer’s disease is the reduced volume of a subfield of the hippocampus called the CA1. The current study sought to investigate whether this change is apparent at midlife.

In line with previous research, lower CA1 volume was found to be associated with both a family history of dementia and greater cardiovascular risk factors, and this change was evident at a mean age of 53. This is important, as it demonstrates that the change can be seen in midlife before symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease have begun. This study also revealed a second, unexpected finding: Individuals with a family history of dementia showed an increase in three other hippocampal regions combined (CA3, CA4, DG), perhaps indicating an early inflammatory or neurogenesis response to early Alzheimer’s disease.

Associations between midlife chronic conditions and medication use with anxiety and depression: A cross-sectional analysis of the PREVENT Dementia study

Lucy E Stirland , Sarah Gregory, Tom C Russ, Craig W Ritchie, Graciela Muniz-Terrera
Journal of Comorbidity. 2020
10.1177/1471301218789307

Summary

There is evidence to suggest that brain health is associated with multimorbidity, polypharmacy, depression and anxiety. This study aimed to investigate the interactions between these four-potential dementia-risk factors (depression, anxiety, multimorbidity and polypharmacy) at mid-life.

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