Dr Clíona Farrell - Forty years of dementia progress; how many more to go?

Dr Clíona Farrell narrates her blog written for Dementia Researcher.

In 1986 Carol Jennings, a teacher from Coventry, answered an appeal in the Alzheimer's Society newsletter with a letter and a hand-drawn family tree. Her family went on to reveal the London mutation in the APP gene, and forty years of Alzheimer's research grew from it, reaching the first disease-modifying treatments shortly before Carol's own death from the disease in 2024.

In this blog Clíona, reports from a UCL200 screening of the BBC documentary The Jennings vs Alzheimer's and the panel that followed. The panel was Stuart Jennings, Prof Catherine Mummery, Prof Nick Fox and Dr Richard Oakley of Alzheimer's Society. The audience wanted to know how anyone can stay hopeful when today's drugs do so little, and the answer came back that this is the start, not the end. From there the discussion turned to what is holding the field back. Diagnosis and post-diagnostic support are underfunded, and stigma still keeps people away from their GP. Researchers are too often poor at explaining their own progress, and dementia sits a long way behind cancer on public health effort. It closes with Carol's habit of asking not why, but what, and her husband's call for everyone to keep putting that question to the people with power to act.

https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk/blog-forty-years-of-dementia-progress-carol-jennings/

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Dr Clíona Farrell is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the UK Dementia Research Institute at University College London. Her work focuses on understanding neuroinflammation in Down syndrome, both prior to, and in response to, Alzheimer’s disease pathology. Originally from Dublin, Ireland, Clíona completed her undergraduate degree in Neuroscience in Trinity College, and then worked as a research assistant in the Royal College of Surgeons studying ALS and Parkinson’s disease. She also knows the secret behind scooping the perfect 99 ice-cream cone.

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This podcast is brought to you by University College London in association with the National Institute for Health and Care Research, Alzheimer's Association, Alzheimer's Research UK, Alzheimer's Society and Race Against Dementia, who we thank for their ongoing support.

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