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Approved research

Investigating the relationship of cognitive decline with various mental and physical health conditions.

Principal Investigator: Dr Veer Gupta
Approved Research ID: 47866
Approval date: November 28th 2019

Lay summary

The incidence of dementia continues to rise worldwide and is a major burden on the health of the elderly population. It is a serious neurological condition which is characterized by the loss of memory and cognitive function, impairing one's capacity to think, reason and analyze. In addition, dementia exerts a significant economic drain, with its current global cost amounting to a trillion US dollars per year, a figure forecasted to double by 2030. Despite the copious efforts that are being carried out towards the early diagnosis of dementia, the research has still not reached to the point-of-care units. Timely diagnosis along with appropriate lifestyle changes has the potential to ameliorate the trajectory of dementia symptoms, necessitating a comprehensive assessment of its multifarious risk and contributory factors. Dementia exhibits multifaceted etiologies and arises due to complex interactions among various medical and lifestyle factors. Since dementia offers a long preclinical phase, an ideal approach would be to understand and target this phase. Therefore, the key to early dementia screening lies in understanding the role of dementia comorbidities/risk factors in the preclinical phase which may alter one's susceptible to developing dementia. Comorbidities such as depression and osteoporosis are vastly regarded as potential risk factors for dementia and their presence may be linked with future onset of dementia. Therefore, the aim of the proposed study is to study the relationship between cognition and different health and lifestyle conditions. In future, this information may help towards the prediction and possible aversion of dementia in older adults as well as guide in therapeutic decision-making. The estimated project duration is 2 years.