The spiralling cost of caring for dementia patients is to be the subject of a major inquiry by MPs and peers.
The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Dementia will look at how funds could be spent more effectively.
Dementia care in the UK is currently estimated to cost £20bn a year, and is likely to rise to around £27bn by 2018.
Read more on BBC Health.
An analysis of published studies on the relationship between Alzheimer’s disease and smoking indicates that smoking cigarettes is a significant risk factor for the disease. After controlling for study design, quality of the journals, time of publication, and tobacco industry affiliation of the authors, a University of California research team also found an association between tobacco industry affiliation and the conclusions of individual studies. Industry-affiliated studies indicated that smoking protects against the development of AD, while independent studies showed that smoking increased the risk of developing the disease.
Study findings were published online in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.
“For many years, published studies and popular media have perpetuated the myth that smoking is protective against the development of AD. The disease’s impact on quality of life and health care costs continues to rise. It is therefore critical that we better understand its causes, in particular, the role of cigarette smoking,” said Janine Cataldo, PhD, RN, assistant professor in the UCSF School of Nursing and lead author of the study.
Read more.
Hundreds of thousands more patients in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease could get drug treatments following a U-turn by the health watchdog.
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, covering England and Wales, now says evidence backs the use of drugs for “mild” symptoms.
Current rules prevent NHS doctors prescribing donepezil, galantamine and rivastigmine in such early cases.
Campaigners said the release of the new draft guidance was a “momentous day”.
Read more at BBC Health.
The costs associated with dementia will amount to more than 1% of the world’s gross domestic product this year at $604bn (£388bn), a report says.
The World Alzheimer Report says this is more than the revenue of retail giant Wal-Mart or oil firm Exxon Mobil.
The authors say dementia poses the most significant health and social crisis of the century as its global financial burden continues to escalate.
As life expectancy goes up around the world there will be more people who will develop dementia. They want the World Health Organization to make dementia a world priority.
The number of people with dementia is expected to double by 2030, and more than triple by 2050.
But experts say the costs of caring for people with dementia are likely to rise even faster than the prevalence, especially in the developing world, as more formal social care systems emerge and rising incomes lead to higher opportunity costs.
Read more at BBC Health.
Read our guide to improving dementia care.
For someone who has a dementia, who may be on the edge of his or her limits of coping at home in a familiar environment, who is seeing the same people and doing the same things each day, the effect of going into hospital can be overwhelming.
What happens in general hospitals can have a profound and permanent effect on individuals with a dementia and their families, not only in terms of their inpatient experience, but also their ongoing functioning, relationships, wellbeing, quality of life and the fundamental decisions that are made about their future.
It is vital that all staff see beyond the label of ‘dementia’ to work with patients and their families in all the complexity of their individual needs. And there is growing evidence on the measures that can be most effective in meeting the needs of people with dementia in acute settings.
A new guide, called Improving quality of care for people with dementia in general hospitals, published by the RCN, outlines key aspects such as environment, communication, assessment, sound care practices, rehabilitative and supportive approaches and effective multi-professional team working.
Offering effective care to people with dementia in general hospitals can reduce the trauma of a hospital admission, the length of the inpatient stay and other healthcare-related complications, and enhance the health, wellbeing and quality of life for individuals and their families.
To read the guide, which is supported by the Department of Health, scroll below.
Dementia now costs the UK economy twice as much as cancer but gets a fraction of the funding to find causes and cures, a report seen by the BBC shows.
For every one pound spent on dementia research, 12 times that sum goes on investigating cancer, figures from the Alzheimer’s Research Trust indicate.
Bridging this gap is urgent, it says, particularly given the numbers with dementia are much higher than thought.
With 821,884 sufferers, dementia costs the UK £23bn annually, the report says.
The number of sufferers is 15% higher than had been estimated, according to the Dementia 2010 report, and the trust says it will now pass the one million mark before 2025.
Read more at BBC Health.
A psychiatry professor has been appointed to oversee how dementia is dealt with in England.
Professor Alistair Burns will lead a strategy launched one year ago by then health secretary Alan Johnson.
He is tasked with promoting better care of people with dementia within the NHS and social care communities in England.
Although the elderly are primary victims of the disease - about a third of people over 65 die with a form of it - it also affects about 15,000 people under the age of 65.
Plans for the national strategy include improving early diagnosis and better patient and carer support.
Prof Burns is currently professor of old age psychiatry at the University of Manchester and Manchester Academic Health Science Centre.
He developed the South Manchester Memory Clinic, which provides specialist assessment and diagnosis for people with memory problems, and also helped establish a drug treatment clinic.
Read more at BBC Health.
A curry a day keeps dementia away. Forget MPs’ expenses and the government’s implosion, this has got to be the biggest story of the year.
It’s brilliant to think that after all the brain damage caused by the compulsory pre-curry ten pints of lager, a Saturday night chicken tikka masala will repair the insult.
And this is all thanks to curcumin, a chemical found in turmeric (but not cumin - confusing innit?), which ‘dissolves’ dementia plaques. Unfortunately, the plucky Brits favourite meal out probably won’t do the job. It takes 100g of turmeric to contain enough active agent to produce a clinical dose, but even four portions of the Anglo-Indian invention only contains 1.25g.
Add to that the vasculopathic effect of all that cream and coconut, and the lagers would have to replaced with a small port and lemon.
Even a dish with a relatively high turmeric content, like piccalilli (isn’t it amazing to think that bright yellow colour comes from a natural ingredient?), contains a minimal amount of curcumin.
So what are my plans to stave off dementia? Apparently being bilingual helps - although I got that from wikipedia so it’s almost certainly not true, and also doing regular brain exercising puzzles.
So the plan is this: nip to the pub for a small port and lemon, and work my way through all the puzzles on the back page of the Times T2 supplement, then go home for a nice big bowl of aloo jeera - and you’re all invited to join me.
