Can we prevent dementia?

Dr Mukadam completed her Medical Sciences undergraduate degree at Cambridge University with an intercalated BA in Experimental Psychology. She then studied Clinical Medicine at the University of Oxford and trained in general medicine and surgery at Oxford and Newcastle. She completed her psychiatric training on the Royal Free Psychiatric Training rotation and obtained her CCT in Old Age Psychiatry in 2013. Dr Mukadam obtained a doctoral research training fellowship from the NIHR to design and test an intervention to encourage South Asian people to seek help earlier for dementia. During her PhD, Dr Mukadam has collaborated on a number of studies, continuing her interest in inequalities related to ethnicity and expanding her research interests to include the epidemiology of dementia. Dr Mukadam’s postdoctoral work is focused on using inter-ethnic epidemiology to find new ways of preventing and treating dementia. Abstract There is growing interest in dementia prevention and a number of risk factors have been identified that contribute to developing dementia. In theory tackling all of these risk factors could prevent up to 40% of dementia cases which would reduce the disease burden and in turn reduce social and economic costs of dementia. However, the evidence for how to tackle risk factors and the effectiveness of interventions is mixed. In addition, the relative importance of different risk factors varies by country and within countries, by demographics. By examining all the evidence and its applicability to different settings, we ask ‘can we truly prevent dementia?’