Grant: CIHR Fellowship

As the world's population ages, the number of people living with dementia is quickly growing. Dementia inflicts an enormous burden on individuals, their families and caregivers, and our society. By 2050, over 131 million people globally will be living with dementia, costing more than US$818 billion. Following multiple failed drug trials for dementia, we urgently need to better understand how dementia develops in order to treat and prevent it. Interestingly, the brain abnormalities (pathology) that are thought to cause dementia are not closely related to the symptoms. Even though we would expect that all people with dementia would have high levels of brain pathology, it doesn't seem to work that way: some people have no dementia but lots of brain pathology, and some people with dementia have very little brain pathology. Frailty has been associated with cognitive decline and dementia and they share many risk factors. One's level of frailty may affect their ability to tolerate brain pathology, so that people who are frail are more likely to have dementia, even if they have low levels of brain pathology. The objectives of the proposed study are to 1) test how frailty, brain pathology, and dementia are related in a collection of studies that accurately represent the population, and 2) test the impact of reducing frailty on dementia risk by re-analyzing clinical trial data. This project has the potential to change our understanding of how dementia develops, and therefore better target our research, clinical, and policy efforts towards effective prevention and treatment for dementia.