Here is how our team contributes to live-changing research and puts a spotlight on Dementia:
In a groundbreaking exploration, Parkinson's UK Senior Fellow Dr Rachael Lawson leads the DELIRIUM-PD study which together with the DECIDE study combines data from two prospective research studies. This approach aims at unravelling the link between Parkinson's disease and delirium and helps to identify and diagnose delirium more quickly, leading to better outcomes for people living with Parkinson’s.
The DELIRIUM-PD includes over 100 people with Parkinson’s over 200 admissions to hospitals in Newcastle. Delirium was assessed daily to capture when delirium developed, what the symptoms looked like and how they changed over time. We also included in depth questions with the carers and relatives of people with Parkinson’s to distinguish symptoms of delirium from those of their usual Parkinson’s or Parkinson’s dementia symptoms. Researchers also used wearable sensors to monitor activity and sleep, and interviewed participants after their hospital stay to find out about their experiences and what we could do to improve care in the future.
As part of the study, researchers found that delirium was more common in Parkinson’s compared to older adults without Parkinson’s. They also found out that an episode of delirium increased the risk of developing dementia by six times in one year, as well as being associated with an increased risk of mortality and loss of independence.
Dr Lawson and her team have developed a new Parkinson’s specific-delirium assessment to improve the recognition of delirium. She is now testing the accuracy and validity of this new assessment and will include over 100 people with Parkinson’s over the next year.
More on this study
Prof Alison Yarnall and Dr Paul Donaghy are currently undertaking a collaborative study with Swansea University which looks at whether the gut hormone acyl-ghrelin (AG) is found in reduced amounts in patients with neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, Dementia with Lewy Bodies and Parkinson’s disease. The study builds on a pilot study completed at the University which found that patients with Parkinson’s Disease Dementia (PDD) had reduced amounts of AG circulating in their gut compared to patients with Parkinson’s Disease (PD, without associated cognitive decline) and healthy patients (a control group who weren’t diagnosed with PDD or PD).
If the current study finds that patients with dementias have reduced amounts of AG, it is hoped that this information could be used to develop a new diagnostic test for dementia. It is also hoped that further research could be carried out to develop novel drugs which would increase the amount of AG in the guts of these patients. Our researchers believe that increased AG could lead to improvements in the cognition of patients with dementia. The study currently takes place at Newcastle University and Swansea University and involves around 100 patients aged over 60 visiting both sites to complete the study.
At the Newcastle upon Tyne NHS Foundation Trust Dementia Conference ‘Defining Dementia’, Alison Yarnall and Alan Thomas have keynote talks on ‘Recognising Dementia’ and ‘Defining Dementia Subtypes’.
The project ‘Improving the Assessment of Driving Safety in Cognitive Impairment’ aims to navigate the complexities of driving safety among individuals with dementia. With support from the Alzheimer's Society, this initiative tackles an area of huge importance to people with dementia and their families. Many people with dementia in the UK will hold a driving licence.
Healthcare professionals are expected to advise people with dementia about the impact their condition may have on driving. This project aims to develop a tool to help healthcare professionals identify whether a person with dementia is safe to drive. The aim is to understand if routinely collected clinical information, such as scores on memory tests, can help identify people who are found to be unsafe in their on road test. We are also looking at whether some specialised tests that could easily be introduced to memory clinics can improve the identification of people who are found to be unsafe.
More on the project
Dr Daniel Erskine’s research is focused on Lewy body diseases, collectively the second most common form of neurodegenerative disease after Alzheimer's disease. Lewy body diseases are characterised by accumulations of the protein alpha-synuclein termed Lewy bodies in particular populations of neurons. The following studies are conducted by Dr Erskine’s team:
Lipids in Lewy body dementia (LBD) is a project that investigates changes in a number of lipids in post-mortem brains of individuals who had LBD, in part, because many risk genes for LBD are involved in lipid metabolism. This work is being performed by Dr Jade Hawksworth and is funded by Alzheimer’s Research UK (ARUK). The team has identified a number of changes, none of which appear to be related to protein pathologies, and they are now studying these in cultured cells to determine how these changes could be contributing to symptoms of LBD.
The study on mitophagy in Lewy body dementia is being performed by Searlait Thom and is funded by the Jacobson Memorial Fund for Neurological Research. In this study, the team has been investigating mitophagy, the process through which damaged mitochondria get recycled, in LBD. They have identified that damaged mitochondria are clustered around Lewy bodies and think that Lewy bodies might be acting like bins for damaged cellular components, implying a protective rather than harmful role.
Alpha-synuclein pathology in metabolic diseases is a collaborative study among several researchers and a variety of funding sources, including ARUK Northern Network. Part of the study is to investigate the neuropathology of paediatric diseases caused by genetic variants in LBD risk genes. They have identified that alpha-synuclein pathology, normally associated with LBD in older people, is also found in brain tissue from children with metachromatic leukodystrophy (MLD; a disease caused by homozygous variants in the ARSA gene, which is also an LBD risk gene). Our preliminary analysis from Brains for Dementia Research data suggests LBD cases with ARSA variants have more LB pathology than those without ARSA variants.