Dementia cure by 2025 'within our grasp', Cameron says including a scan that can spot Alzheimer's free on the NHS



Doctors will be able to rule out Alzheimer's in some patients for five years



Currently one in five cases of the disease is misdiagnosed



Could help doctors confirm an existing diagnosis ensuring people get the treatment they need

A cure for dementia could be found by 2025, David Cameron said today as he announced a doubling in finding for the disease.

The Prime Minister also announced that Britain will be the first place in the world where a new brain scan that can help doctors confirm or rule out a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease will be available for free.

The test will mean that, for the first time, doctors will be able to definitively rule out Alzheimer’s in some patients for five years. Currently, one in five cases of the disease is misdiagnosed.

NHS patients will benefit from a new brain scan that can help doctors confirm or rule out a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. The scan on the left is of a brain without Alzheimer's, and the one on the right does have it



Promise: David Cameron told health leaders from the G8 nations that the UK government will double funding for dementia research by 2025

It could also help doctors to confirm an existing diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, ensuring people get the treatment they need.

The World Health Organisation forecasts that numbers of dementia sufferers will almost double worldwide every two decades.

Mr Cameron said he wants UK Government investment in dementia research to double from £66 million in 2015 to £122 million in 2025 - with similar increases from the commercial and charitable sectors.

He said he hoped it would mark the point when 'the global fightback really started, not just in finding a cure for dementia, but also in preventing it, delaying it and, crucially, helping those with dementia to live well and with dignity'.

The PM told a major international summit in London on dementia that he wanted the UK's life sciences industries to play 'a leading role' in the fight against dementia.

'The challenge is huge and we are a long way from a cure, but there is hope,' he said.

'We meet with the conviction that human ingenuity can overcome the most daunting of challenges and we meet with the determination that we will take the fight to dementia and improve and save millions of lives.'

And he added: 'The aim of trying to find a cure or disease-halting therapy by 2025 by a big collective boost to research funding is within our grasp.'



Mr Cameron and Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt (centre) pose with health ministers from the G8 nations at the Dementia Summit at Lancaster House in London

The new Alzheimer's test – which costs £810 per patient – involves giving the patient a tiny amount of a radioactive chemical called Amyvid which binds to the tell-tale plaques in the brain of an Alzheimer’s sufferer.

This chemical will show up the plaques on a brain scan for the first time, allowing doctors to definitively rule out Alzheimer’s in a patient for at least five years if no plaques are present.



It means the patient will not be given potentially harmful treatments if they don’t need them.

Until this breakthrough, it was not possible to definitively diagnose someone as having the disease until after their death, by cutting up their brain.

Such examinations show that one in five people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s do not in fact have it, meaning they may have been given the wrong treatment while they were alive. These patients will be the test’s main beneficiaries.

In addition, if the test reveals the presence of plaques on the brain, it could confirm a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. However, the plaques can be present in other conditions and so the scan alone is not enough to pinpoint the disease.



Until this breakthrough, it was not possible to definitively diagnose someone as having the disease until after their death, by cutting up their brain

There are 800,000 people with dementia in the UK, and about two thirds of those are Alzheimer’s. By 2021, more than a million people will have dementia. It is one of the main causes of disability in old age, ahead of cancer, heart disease and stroke.

Mr Cameron said: ‘It doesn’t matter whether you’re in London or Los Angeles, in rural India or urban Japan – this disease steals lives, it wrecks families, it breaks hearts and that is why all of us here are so utterly determined to beat it.

‘In generations past, the world came together to take on the great killers. We stood against malaria, cancer, HIV and Aids and we are just as resolute today.

‘I want December 11th 2013 to go down as the day that the global fight-back began.’



The Amyvid test – developed by US drugs firm Lilly – has previously been used elsewhere in the world, but only through private health schemes.

Use of the technique by the NHS is the first time it has been available as part of a state-funded health system.



The first British patient to benefit will be scanned tomorrow at Charing Cross Hospital, part of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, in London.

Dr Richard Perry, consultant neurologist at the trust, said it could help hundreds of people every year.

‘For people who have memory problems and who are concerned about them, knowing the cause is the first step in getting the right sort of treatment.

‘Until now, diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease has not been always straightforward because we haven’t had a simple test. A positive scan in the right context could support a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, but you would have to look at a person’s other symptoms as well.’

