{"id":18397,"date":"2019-09-20T12:23:50","date_gmt":"2019-09-20T11:23:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/research-blog\/?p=18397"},"modified":"2021-11-03T13:44:16","modified_gmt":"2021-11-03T13:44:16","slug":"defeating-dementia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/research-blog\/2019\/09\/20\/defeating-dementia\/","title":{"rendered":"Defeating dementia"},"content":{"rendered":"

From finding brain changes decades before dementia strikes to exploring the protective effects of speaking another language, Reading researchers are targeting the disease on several fronts. For World Alzheimer\u2019s Day, we spoke to Dr Mark Dallas about some of the University’s cutting-edge research in this area.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Many of us will know someone affected with a dementia like Alzheimer\u2019s disease. Dementia affects 50 million people around the world and that figure is set to reach 152 million by 2050. But we still don\u2019t fully understand the disease nor do we have any treatments. More research is critical.<\/p>\n

Charity Alzheimer\u2019s Research UK recently provided renewed funding of \u00a368,500 to the Thames Valley Alzheimer\u2019s Research Network, the partners of which are the Universities of Reading, Oxford and Oxford Brookes. Formerly known as the Oxford network it has been re-named to reflect Reading\u2019s growing contribution.<\/p>\n

Early changes<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dementia is slow and stealthy. Changes in brain chemistry that will ultimately lead to the disease can occur in early mid-life, as early as your forties – decades before dementia symptoms appear. These changes involve not just brain cells but also the veins and arteries supplying them and cells responsible for inflammation.<\/p>\n

Neuroscientist and network lead Dr Mark Dallas\u2019s research looks at the resident immune cells of the brain, the microglia. In particular, he is investigating their ability to detect these early changes to brain activity before the symptoms of dementia start to be noticeable.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe believe, alongside other dementia researchers, that these cells that offer insight into brain health. By studying them we hope we can uncover the subtle changes in their own activity that precede the death of nerve cells.<\/p>\n

This could bring benefits to people living with dementia in two ways: it could offer the potential for new drug targets and also the ability to get an early diagnosis which will help with long term management of dementia,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n

Bilingual benefits<\/strong><\/p>\n

Brain imaging studies by Dr Christos Pliatsikas from Reading’s School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences are looking at how speaking more than one language can help protect the brain against dementia.<\/p>\n

Toms Voits from Christos’s lab recently led a study comparing MRI scans of the brains of healthy bilingual people aged 55 \u2013 65 who have spoken two languages in their everyday life for many years, with those of monolingual people of a similar age.<\/p>\n

Findings revealed differences in physical brain structures between the two groups. On average, bilingual people had a greater volume of brain tissue in part of the brain called the hippocampus \u2013 responsible for memory and language acquisition \u2013 than monolingual people of the same age. In fact, the more time the bili<\/span><\/span>ng<\/span><\/span>uals had spent in a country where they <\/span><\/span>actively <\/span><\/span>spoke their second language, the bigger their hippocampus was (see picture below).<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Loss of brain processing power as we age is known to happen more slowly in bilingual people. Christos\u2019s work suggests this could be because bilinguals have more tissue to lose and therefore greater protection against the ravages of dementia (the amount of brain tissue lost over the course of Alzheimer\u2019s disease weighs roughly the same as an orange.)<\/p>\n

Ongoing work will study 40 bilingual patients diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment to test if differences in brain structure relates to their diagnosis and to their type and amount of bilingual experiences.<\/p>\n

Navigating the medicines minefield<\/strong><\/p>\n

Making and attending GP appointments, organising repeat prescriptions and remembering to take both regular and short term medications – navigating the healthcare system to complete these tasks can be a minefield for a person with dementia.<\/p>\n

Many hand over control of their medications to a carer – but pharmacist Dr Rosemary Lim\u2019s research is looking at helping people living with the disease to manage their medicines in their own homes and empowering them to be more independent.<\/p>\n

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Image: tr0tt3r\/CC BY-SA 2.0 <\/span><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve found that people with dementia come up with strategies of their own, for example ticking medications off on a list or even using Alexa to remind them when to take their medication,\u201d explains Rosemary.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She is working to classify these strategies according to their characteristics and ultimately produce guidelines to help people with dementia to find their way around the system.<\/p>\n

In today\u2019s squeezed NHS, community pharmacists have very little time with people with dementia and they can come away with a limited understanding of what drugs they are taking. Another strand of Rosemary\u2019s work is to improve communication between pharmacists and people with dementia, and their carers, to make the most of these short encounters.<\/p>\n

Promoting partnerships<\/strong><\/p>\n

With funding secured for another year, the network is in a good position to advance understanding of Alzheimer\u2019s and foster new collaborations.<\/p>\n

Mark says: \u201cThe award aims to foster new ideas and collaborations to bring about changes to the way we support people living with dementia but also targeting the causes with a view to developing new medicines.\u201d<\/p>\n

“For example, the network is closely aligned to the Oxford Drug Discovery Institute, which leaves researchers in Reading and Oxford well placed to take forward findings made at the lab bench into clinical trials.”<\/p>\n

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Find out more about the ARUK Thames Valley Network Centre<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Learn more about Dr Mark Dallas\u2019s research<\/a> in this video of his 2018 public lecture, \u2018Brain Glue: sticking it to dementia\u2019:<\/em><\/p>\n