The Deep and Frequent Phenotyping Study is a multi-site study, led by Professor Simon Lovestone at the University of Oxford, and is funded by the MRC and NIHR as part of Dementias Platform UK – a UK-wide infrastructure network designed to support large, multicentre studies into dementia.
It is hoped that the broad range of tests on people in their middle ages will open up paths to early diagnosis and offer clues to effective treatments for Alzheimer’s disease before major damage to the brain has been done.
Listen to the first report by Andrew Bomford for BBC Radio 4’s World at One, 26 June 2017:
https://soundcloud.com/oxforduni/how-close-are-we-to-finding-a-cure-for-alzheimers
In a follow-up report on 27 June 2017 for BBC Radio 4’s World at One, Professor Clare Mackay talks about the big data approach, and Professor Simon Lovestone considers what has been the greatest obstacle to progress so far. Is it our understanding of Alzheimer’s disease, the drugs, or the clinical trials?
Listen to the second report by Andrew Bomford for BBC Radio 4’s World at One, 27 June 2017:
https://soundcloud.com/oxforduni/how-close-are-we-to-finding-a-cure-for-alzheimers-part-2
“In a cartoon version you’d imagine that people go all the way through their lives performing at a particular level, and then they just start to decline very gradually when they reach a particular age. This is people who would go on to develop disease. And that very early stage of that, the gradient is very, very shallow, so we need really sensitive measures to be able to pick it up.” Professor Clare Mackay
See this special feature on the Radio 4 website with extracts from the reports: Seven things you need to know about Alzheimer's Disease.