For participants

Our Study

Prevent Dementia is a UK and Ireland wide study for people aged 40 – 59.

We use thinking and memory assessments, clinical examinations, MRI brain imaging and genetics to track how the brain changes throughout middle age.

We hope to find ways to predict who is at greatest risk of dementia, so that we can intervene and prevent the disease taking hold.

What’s involved in taking part?

If you’re thinking of joining our study, thank you!

We have five study sites across the UK and Ireland:
the Universities of Edinburgh, Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial College London and Trinity College Dublin.
Volunteers are invited to one of our centres to take part in a range of cognitive, clinical and imaging tests.
These tests form a baseline, against which any future changes can be measured.

Physical
health checks

Blood pressure readings, an Electrocardiogram (ECG) a tracing of the heart’s activity, a lung function test, blood tests, height and weight monitoring and a physical exam from a doctor.

Biological
sample collection

Blood, urine, saliva and spinal fluid in some participants.

Memory
assessments

Memory and thinking tasks are completed which aim to identify subtle changes in cognition.

Brain
Scanning

Participants will undergo an MRI scan and will be asked to complete some tasks whilst the scan is being carried out.

Lifestyle
questionnaires

These cover areas such as diet, personality, history of brain injury, sleep quality and history of stressful life events.

We follow up our volunteers with the same tests two years later, and hope to track them for many years to come.


Testimonial

Prevent Dementia participant

Prevent Dementia participant

I know that I would rather get any other disease than dementia.
We need to fix it, and hopefully, with projects like this, we are on our way. I hope that my contribution will in some way help us to find better ways of diagnosing the disease and potentially, one day, to prevent it.