The PREVENT Dementia Programme has a number of publications which have been published across a range of peer reviewed journals and can be accessed through the links in the categories below.
Imaging -
View all [27]
Alzheimer’s & dementia (2025)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/dad2.70075
Summary
The study explores whether there is a connection between the tiny blood vessels in the eye’s choroid (a layer behind the retina) and the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease in middle-aged adults who are cognitively healthy. It included 69 middle-aged adults from the PREVENT Dementia programme who had undergone optical coherence tomography (OCT) scanning. We used OCT to measure the choroidal blood vessels. Participants were divided into low, medium, and high-risk groups based on genetic factors, family history of dementia, and the CAIDE score. We found that individuals with a higher genetic risk for Alzheimer’s had thicker choroidal blood vessels and more vascular tissue compared to those with lower risk. Specifically, a small increase in choroidal vascular area was linked to a higher likelihood of having Alzheimer’s risk markers. The results suggest a potential link between the choroidal microvasculature and Alzheimer’s disease risk, but the findings are preliminary and need to be confirmed in larger, more diverse studies. This research highlights the potential of using eye exams to identify early signs of Alzheimer’s disease, which could lead to earlier interventions and better outcomes for those at risk.
Cognition -
View all [10]
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience (2024)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2024.1509223
Summary
Allostatic Load (AL) is a way to describe the damage to your body that happens when you are constantly stressed for a long time. This study looked at how different types of stress over your life, as well as having a healthy lifestyle, can affect Allostatic Load.
The researchers studied information from 620 people who were part of the PREVENT dementia program. They found that doing sports and having a healthy diet directly helped reduce Allostatic Load. They also found that playing sports could help a person handle stress better, but sleep was really important for this to work. Both stress and how well you deal with it affected sleep, which in turn played a big role in how Allostatic Load changed. Using healthy habits, like eating well and getting good sleep, to manage stress is likely to be good for our health.
Other -
View all [11]
Craig W Ritchie, Katie Bridgeman, Sarah Gregory, John T O’Brien, Samuel O Danso, Maria-Eleni Dounavi, Isabelle Carriere, David Driscoll, Robert Hillary, Ivan Koychev, Brian Lawlor, Lorina Naci, Li Su, Audrey Low, Elijah Mak, Paresh Malhotra, Jean Manson, Riccardo Marioni, Lee Murphy, Georgios Ntailianis, William Stewart, Graciela Muniz-Terrera, Karen Ritchie
Brain Communications (2024)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.numecd.2023.07.020
Summary
The PREVENT cohort offers a novel dataset to explore midlife risk factors and early signs of neurodegenerative disease. The cohort includes 700 participants recruited across five sites in the United Kingdom and Ireland (Cambridge, Dublin, Edinburgh, London and Oxford). At baseline, participants had a mean age of 51.2 years, with the majority female (n=433, 61.9%). There was a near equal distribution of participants with and without a parental history of dementia (51.4% vs 48.6%) and a relatively high prevalence of APOEɛ4 carriers (n=264, 38.0%). Participants were highly educated (16.7 ± 3.44 years of education), and mainly of European Ancestry (n=672, 95.9%). This paper provides an overview of the study protocol and presents the first summary results from the initial baseline data to describe the cohort.
