去年年底,部长,研究人员系统地ical companies and charities from around the world gathered together at theG8 dementia summit做一个declaration and commitment全球行动dementia. This led to a significant increase in the budget to spend on research into the prevalence, diagnosis, clinical care, and policy issues in dementia, and the latest advances in these topics were highlighted last week at the16^thnational conference on dementiasin London. Some of the main discussions from the meeting have been highlighted below.

Prevalence and improving quality of life

Martin Princegave an excellent overview of groundbreaking global epidemiological studies including some from the10/66 Dementia Research Group. One of these studies showed asubstantial underestimationof the true prevalence of dementia in low-income and middle-income countries, and other recent evidence indicates that theburden of dementia is risingin China. Dementia prevalence in Europe was outlined byKarim Saad, who described the latestAlzheimer’s Cooperative Valuation in Europe(ALCOVE) project that seeks to determine the timely and accurate diagnosis of dementia and to develop preventive and care recommendations to facilitate policy and health care decision making in European countries. In addition, the UK Medical Research Council Cognitive Function and Ageing studies (CFAS I and II) indicate thatpopulations aged 65 years and older in 2008-2011 have a lower risk of dementiathan populations from between 1989 and 1994.

Complexity of dementia due to multimorbidities was highlighted bySube Banerjeein an exceptional presentation showing that dementia patients are admitted into hospital because of a number of physical illnesses but are given sub-optimal care. The recentworld Alzheimer’s report 2013has recommended better long-term care for patients with dementia that involves integrated and coordinated services. Interestingly, end-of-life care was emphasized byLouise Robinsonwith the necessity for advance care planning schemes. Other UK initiatives were described byJeremy Hughesincludingdementia friendly communitiesandDementia Action Allianceto promote public awareness and to improve quality of life of dementia patients and their carers.

Advances in diagnostics

Only44% of people with dementiain England, Wales and Northern Ireland receive a diagnosis, which was highlighted in an impressive update fromJohn O’Brienon the use of Florbetapir (¹⁸F) (trade name AMYViD) in Positron Emission Tomography (PET) imaging for early detection of Alzheimer’s disease. This method has recently beenapproved in Europeand has previously been shown to becorrelated with the presence and density of β-amyloid.A rapid diagnostic system to provide “timely” diagnosis of the condition was further presented in a fascinating talk byDerek Hillon theAssessa digital toolthat seeks to combine imaging measurements with results of computerized or traditional cognitive assessments to enable patients to be compared with age-matched normal and diseased subjects.

Therapeutics

Roy Jonesgave an excellent summary on the current developments in clinical trials of treatments for dementia. These included various agents that are being tested such as immunotherapy, reduction of amyloid and others that effect tau and chlolinergic systems. There is also growing interest in preventing dementia based on lifestyle factors. Once such factor is diet, and David Wilkinson discussed a new nutritional approach for treating Alzheimer’s disease based on clinical trial evidence and the EU funded trial (LipiDiDiet), which is currently underway to determine whether a lipid-based diet reduces the risk of Alzheimer’s disease and whether it has a stabilizing effect on cognitive performance in aging.

The evidence presented at the meeting on prevalence, diagnosis, therapies and care in dementia revealed the importance of further research to help reduce the burden of this devastating disease. We look forward to the results of the ongoing trials, which will hopefully improve diagnosis and help in the treatment and management of patients with dementia. We are keen to publish research advances on these topics, so if you have any potential submissions you would like us to consider, please get in touch atbmcmedicineeditorial@biomedcentral.com.