The ‘brain statin' quest

A treatment to delay – and even stop – dementia is on its way, says David Cameron

- David Cameron

The coronavirus pandemic has swept across our world and is changing life as we know it. But even as we fight COVID-19 – a fight that will bring hardship to so many – other battles continue. One of those is against dementia.

The search for a life-changing treatment is urgent. It is estimated that, without treatments, one in three children born today will eventually contract diseases such as Alzheimer’s, which cause dementia. The cost to the economy – from healthcare to lost working hours – is a staggering £26bn. Yet government funding for research remains just £82.5m per year, compared with £269m for cancer. Indeed, we can do little more for a person with Alzheimer’s today than we could when Dr Alzheimer first identified the disease in 1906.

I’ll never forget visiting local care homes as a young MP. Every time I went, it seemed a new floor or wing was being added to look after the increasing number of people slipping into this world of darkness. And yet many at the time seemed to assume this was simply an inevitable part of ageing.

That’s why I decided to make dementia one of my big focuses in politics: to address both the communications challenge of this assumed inevitability and the medical challenge around a lack of research and understanding.