Lecture: Dementia overview and new directions
A/Professor Sam Nightingale
By 2050, the number of people living with dementia is predicated to more than triple to 7.62 million. Sub-Saharan Africa will experience the largest increases as it has the fastest growing rates of older people in the world. This lecture will give an overview of dementia, its causes and consequences. It will focus on Alzheimer’s disease, the most common cause of dementia, and explore what the study of people ageing with HIV can tell us about the mechanisms underlying this disease. Recently the first medications to treat Alzheimer’s disease have been approved. Although their benefit is currently modest, we will discuss whether this may herald a new era of dementia management. Sam's most recent research, the Inqondo study, is supported by a generous grant from the Donald Gordon Foundation.