Once it was cancer, but now surveys
show that dementia is our most feared disease. While advances in surgery,
screening and drug therapies have transformed the outlook for cancer patients,
dementia has been left behind.
The best that drugs currently
available for it can do is slow the progression of the disease or temporarily
alleviate the symptoms.
However, there is some better news.
Last month Dr Dennis Gillings, chair of the World Dementia Council, said he was
'optimistic' that treatments to halt or reverse dementia may be developed
within five years.
Dementia refers to a set of
symptoms, including loss of memory, confusion and difficulties with thinking,
or language, caused by some sort of damage to the brain. Typically it starts
after the age of 65 and the risk increases with age, with one in six
80-year-olds affected.
There are more than 100 forms of
dementia, but the most common, affecting more than 520,000 people in Britain,
is Alzheimer's disease, where abnormal proteins - amyloid and tau - build up in
the brain, leading, it's thought, to a loss of connections between cells.
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