The growing global burden of dementia has become a top priority for the World Health Organisation. The emerging consensus is that dementia prevention and not treatment may offer a more promising avenue of healthcare outcomes. To this end, significant research interest has centred on detecting the disease earlier or predicting those who are at highest risk of dementia so that we can potentially treat people earlier.
Early signs of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) can be picked up from MRI scans of the brain for several years before the dementia is diagnosed. There is also exciting evidence to suggest that imaging of the retina at the back of our eyes can detect early signs of degeneration that are predictive of future memory problems and dementia. Aside from brain and retinal imaging, there are several genetic, social-cultural and lifestyle factors that have been identified which increase the risk of AD.
The aim of this research project is to improve the accuracy of dementia risk predictions by including information from retinal images and MRI scans and about genetics and lifestyle into the way we calculate dementia risk. This will help us to identify people at high risk of dementia so that we can advise them to make lifestyle changes to prevent the onset of dementia or we can treat them with dementia drugs earlier when they might have greater impact. It will also help policy makers decide which social interventions might reduce the population prevalence of dementia and promote healthier ageing.
