Early detection for dementia, an oxymoron? Examining the evidence from population studies
Event description
Early detection for dementia is often presented as an obvious good: find it earlier, treat it earlier, prevent it if we can. But what if, when it comes to dementia in very old age, “early detection” is more complicated—and sometimes even misleading?
Professor Carol Brayne is a leading public health researcher who has spent decades studying dementia in large groups of people living in the community rather than in clinics. Her work on major UK studies such as the Cognitive Function and Ageing Studies (CFAS) has shown that dementia risk changes over time, that people can have “dementia-like” changes in the brain without obvious symptoms, and that some countries have seen lower rates of dementia at a given age than in the past.
In this talk, she will ask some uncomfortable but important questions: When does dementia really begin, and how sure can we be? What happens when we start labelling people with “early” or “preclinical” dementia based on memory tests or brain scans, especially if we do not yet have widely available treatments that change the long-term outlook? And could our push to detect dementia ever earlier end up medicalising normal ageing, worrying people unnecessarily, or taking attention and resources away from things that might make a bigger difference to brain health—like education, inequality, and overall health across the life course?
Drawing on long-running population studies and her influential paper “Against the stream: early diagnosis of dementia, is it so desirable?”, Professor Brayne will explore:
How the numbers of people living with dementia are changing over time.
Why early memory problems and “mild cognitive impairment” do not always lead to dementia.
The gap between what tests and scans show and how people actually function day to day.
The ethical and practical dilemmas of telling someone they are “at risk” years before symptoms may—or may not—develop.
This event is for anyone interested in ageing, brain health, and dementia—whether you are a student, researcher, clinician, policymaker, or simply curious about how we should think about diagnosis and prevention in later life.