Use of powerful medications linked to elevated risk of serious adverse outcomes including heart failure

Doctors are being urged to reduce prescribing of antipsychotic drugs to dementia patients after the largest study of its kind found they were linked to more harmful side-effects than previously thought.

The powerful medications are widely prescribed for behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia such as apathy, depression, aggression, anxiety, irritability, delirium and psychosis. Tens of thousands of dementia patients in England are prescribed them every year.

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People in routine and repetitive jobs found to have 31% greater risk of disease in later life, and 66% higher risk of mild cognitive problems

If work is a constant flurry of mind-straining challenges, bursts of creativity and delicate negotiations to keep the troops happy, consider yourself lucky.

Researchers have found that the more people use their brains at work, the better they seem to be protected against thinking and memory problems that come with older age.

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Birmingham Rep
Expressive performances and arresting effects heighten this mother-son tragedy, primarily told through British Sign Language

This drama opens with a lilting evocation of summer: a back-screen bursting with pink blossom, the twitter of birdsong and a reading of the Shakespeare sonnet: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” This lyricism remains throughout but The Promise turns into a quietly devastating, and autumnal, story of dementia, death and family miscommunication.

Created by Deafinitely Theatre, and primarily told through British Sign Language, it is the story of a mother, Rita (Anna Seymour) and son, Jake (James Boyle), who have become estranged. He is gay, his disapproving father (Louis Neethling) has died, and he feels enduringly let down by Rita because she promised to come to his wedding in Amsterdam but never showed up. The story begins as they meet after what seems like a long absence, and Rita, now retired, shows clear signs of dementia.

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Exclusive: Treatments near approval but lack of diagnostic capacity means NHS is unprepared for rollout, says report

• What are the symptoms of dementia and how do you get a diagnosis?

Hundreds of thousands of dementia patients in England face being denied access to revolutionary new drugs because the diagnostic capacity of the NHS lags behind every other G7 country, according to a damning report.

After decades of research to find a cure for the condition projected to affect 153 million people worldwide by 2050, scientists have successfully developed the first treatments to tackle the underlying causes rather than only relieve the symptoms. Two new drugs could get the green light for use on the NHS within weeks.

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More than 50 clinics will offer tests to about 5,000 people who are worried about their memory in five-year trial

Thousands of people across the UK who are worried about their memory will receive blood tests for dementia in two trials that doctors hope will help to revolutionise the low diagnosis rate.

Teams from the University of Oxford and University College London will lead the trials to research the use of cheap and simple tests to detect proteins for people with early stages of dementia or problems with cognition, with the hope of speeding up diagnosis and reaching more people.

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App-based cognitive tests found to be proficient at detecting frontotemporal dementia in those most at risk

A smartphone app could help detect a leading cause of early-onset dementia in people who are at high risk of developing it, data suggests.

Scientists have demonstrated that cognitive tests done via a smartphone app are at least as sensitive at detecting early signs of frontotemporal dementia in people with a genetic predisposition to the condition as medical evaluations performed in clinics.

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The latest advert by the Alzheimer’s Society is shocking, but it tells the harsh reality about the disease that is the leading cause of death in Britain

We see a man giving a speech at his mother’s wake. It starts off as you might expect. But he goes on to tell us how his mother died multiple times in the eyes of those who loved her. When she became convinced her friends were stealing from her. When she asked him, her son, what his name was. When she looked straight through his dad. Then he says she died a final time surrounded by the people who loved her.

This is the latest ad from the Alzheimer’s Society . Anna had dementia. At the end, a voiceover from Colin Firth tells us: “With dementia, you don’t just die once, you die again, and again, and again. Which is why at Alzheimer’s Society, we’ll be with you again, and again, and again.”

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A failing memory can be frustrating, but it may be a sign your brain is working exactly as it should

Every day, people across the planet ask themselves this question, myself included. When we are desperately searching for our glasses, wallet or keys, we might wish to have a photo­graphic memory, but the truth is we are designed to forget.

In fact, the majority of what we experience in a given day is likely to be forgotten in less than 24 hours. And that is a good thing. Think of all the passing encounters with people you will never see again, the times you spend waiting in a queue at the supermarket, and those awkward times when you find yourself looking at the floor while stuck in a crowded elevator. If our brains hoarded away every moment of every experience, we would never be able to find the information we need amid an ever-increasing pile of detritus.

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From specifically adapted performances to telling new stories about memory, drama groups are innovating with music, movement and wordless performance to bring the joy of theatre to everyone

When my grandma was a child, she wanted to be a star. She would hide behind the kitchen door when her parents had friends over and do her best opera singer impression, hoping to be discovered. In her last years, when she was living with dementia, singing to her was one of the few guarantees of hearing her laugh, the words to the songs often still as clear as they had ever been in her mind.

Music has long been known to help rustle up the joys and memories that make a life, which dementia can obscure. “When I’m singing,” says one participant of Our Time , a drama group at Leeds Playhouse for people living with dementia, “I don’t feel that I’m on my own.” These sessions are led by Nicky Taylor, a researcher and practitioner who radiates enthusiasm for changing the stories we tell about a condition that affects more than 900,000 people in the UK. “People with dementia are often written off,” says Taylor, “but our participants are sometimes contributing right up until the last days or weeks of their life. That, to me, is remarkable.”

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