Abstract

Dementia is a complex condition that can progress rapidly in some people. Professor Kelvin Jordan and Dr Michelle Marshall from Keele University are leading a team of researchers using routinely gathered patient data from GP medical records to find out more about the pathways of progression in dementia, so we can identify people who are most at risk of deteriorating quickly and intervene sooner rather than later.Around 850,000 people are currently living with dementia in the UK, and the condition varies widely. Some people with dementia get worse rapidly, and quickly need to move to a care home or die early, while others live with it for much longer.Currently, we don’t have a thorough understanding of the mechanisms behind dementia or the factors that influence its progression. But if we could identify critical markers that suggest a person’s dementia is advancing quickly, it would enable us to manage them more closely and intervene at the right time for how their dementia is progressing.However, clinical studies aiming to increase our knowledge about dementia often struggle to provide meaningful results on early progression. That’s why we’re turning to routinely collected primary care records to find out more about the early markers of progression in dementia.