Indian-origin expert Ashwini joins Britain's research team on dementia

Indian-origin neurologist Dr. Ashwini Keshavan has been made a part of Britain's world-class research team. This team has been entrusted with the task of conducting research towards detecting dementia through blood tests and collecting more evidence in this direction.

• The results of this research team can be used more widely in the coming five years.
• Due to dementia, memory becomes weak in the people affected by it.
• Dr. Ashwini Keshavan is part of a team focusing on p-tau217, a promising biomarker for Alzheimer's disease. At the same time, another team of researchers from Oxford and Cambridge universities will test various proteins to detect diseases that cause dementia. Both teams will aim to make the treatment affordable and recruit participants from across the UK.

About Dementia:

• Dementia is a syndrome. It is usually of a chronic nature – leading to a decline in cognitive function, in contrast to the usual results of the biological theory of aging.
• It impacts memory, cognitive functions like reasoning and comprehension, spatial awareness, mathematical abilities, learning capacity, language skills, and decision-making processes.
• However, consciousness is not affected due to dementia.
• Of the total deaths due to this, 65% are women. Disability-adjusted life years due to dementia are approximately 60% longer in women than in men.

Main symptoms of dementia:

• Dementia includes symptoms such as amnesia, difficulty thinking, visual perception, self-management, problem solving or language, and the ability to concentrate.
• In dementia, there are changes in a person's behavior such as depression, anxiety, mental insanity and mood swings.

Causes of Dementia:

• Dementia can occur due to many reasons, mainly: 
  • Damage to brain cells can lead to dementia.
  • Dementia can be caused by head injury, stroke, brain tumor or HIV infection.

Main treatments for dementia:

• Currently, there is no cure for dementia. Treatment options focus on managing symptoms, slowing down its progression, and improving the quality of life for individuals affected by dementia.
• But many new treatments are being investigated in various stages of clinical trials.

India's initiatives in the field of dementia:

• Alzheimer's and Related Disorders Society of India calls on the government to formulate its own plan or policy on dementia. It should be implemented in all states and financed and monitored by the Health Ministry.
• In September 2021, the World Health Organization released a report titled 'Global Status Report on the Public Health Response to Dementia'.
• It assesses progress towards the global targets for dementia set for 2025 in WHO's 'Global Dementia Action Plan' published in 2017.