Abstract

The UK Dementia Research Institute (UK DRI) is an initiative funded by the Medical Research Council, Alzheimer’s Society and Alzheimer’s Research UK. Funding details for UK DRI programmes will be added in 2019. Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is characterised by a prolonged pre-clinical phase involving Aβ deposition but without the typical symptoms of cognitive impairment and frank dementia until relatively late on in the disease process. Though there is well described genetic predisposition to AD, most notably presence of the APOE ε4 allele, known genetic factors to date explain only a small proportion of the variance in AD occurrence1. Little is known about the environmental, lifestyle and metabolic factors that, interacting with genetic background, determine who ultimately will go on to manifest clinical disease. Gaining knowledge of these risk factors is key to tackling the growing burden of AD, vascular and other dementias, as it offers the potential for lifestyle and preventive measures, and novel treatments, to delay or offset occurrence of clinical disease, with resultant gains in life expectancy and quality of life. This would be a major advance, since the current paradigm of diagnosis and treatment of overt disease is late, never-ending and largely ineffective. Furthermore it is associated with poor quality of life, high burden for carers, and an ever increasing cost for health services as the population ages. Reversing this trend by reducing the incidence and prevalence of dementia is an urgent priority.