Number of dementia diagnoses 'inaccurate'
Monday 20th December 2010
The number of people diagnosed with dementia amounts to less than half of those who actually suffer from the condition, according to the Alzheimer's Society.
According to the charity, approximately 575,000 people in the UK have dementia - a far cry from the 249,463 people who were recorded as diagnosed with the condition by the NHS' Quality and Outcomes Framework.
Dr Marie Janson, director of development at the Alzheimer's Research Trust, said that one explanation for this lack of diagnoses could be the slow appearance of symptoms and how similar they are to those of other conditions.
"Spotting Alzheimer's and other dementias early is essential to the global research effort to defeat dementia. We know that treatments for many diseases can be more successful if given early and this is likely to be true for dementia too," she added.
Meanwhile, the discovery of hundreds of proteins crucial to brain health, published in published in journal Nature Neuroscience, could result in treatments for 130 illnesses as well as multifunctional drugs which would target several issues at once.
Written by Martin Lambert
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