Ian McKeith, Professor of Old Age Psychiatry
Newcastle University led the world in first identifying and explaining dementia with Lewy bodies more than 20 years ago. Research continues today at the University’s Institute for Ageing and Health (IAH) to discover the basic causes of this and other forms of dementia such as Alzheimer’s Disease, and to find treatments.
Outstanding facilities
Among the facilities at the Institute is the Newcastle Brain Tissue Resource – formerly known as the Brain Bank – the leading repository of its kind in the UK.
This is funded by the Medical Research Council, the Alzheimer’s Society and Alzheimer’s Research UK. Requests are made, often several times a week, for tissues samples from researchers in the UK, Europe and around the world.
Professor of Old Age Psychiatry, Ian McKeith, says that researchers investigate the tissue to try to find out why nerve cells in the brain degenerate in a particular way to cause dementia.
"An investigator might want to examine a molecular pathway or look at genes in a particular part of the brain," he explained. "If you understand the processes that are dysfunctional it could lead you to some sort of therapy."
Newcastle has been at the forefront of multi-disciplinary research on dementia for more than 20 years, and Professor McKeith is one of the members of the team who helped to establish the IAH. The pioneering work on dementia with Lewy bodies studies why brain cells produce an abnormal protein called alpha synuclein. This collects within microscopic clumps, or Lewy bodies.
"If you have a mutation in the gene which makes this protein that is sufficient to give you the disease," he said.
Professor McKeith and his team are collaborating with a research group in Germany to accelerate progress in studying the complexities of this abnormal protein production.
Biomedical Research Unit
In 2011 the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) awarded the Institute funding for a Biomedical Research Unit, where the Lewy body research is now focused.
Professor McKeith has been pulling together new clinical projects. Some of this activity will involve searching for ways of diagnosing the disease earlier, while other work will investigate possible treatments.
The research unit is housed in the top floor of the Institute’s new Biomedical Research Building, completed at the beginning of 2012 and located on the Campus for Ageing and Vitality.
This floor of the building also co-hosts the Dementias and Neurodegenerative Diseases Clinical Research Network (DeNDRoN), jointly administered with University College London. This is funded by the NIHR and supports dementia research projects across the country.
The medical disciplines of psychiatry and neurology come together in this network, as dementia straddles two parts of the healthcare system. Some patients enter the system with, for example, movement disorders which are neurological, while others have cognitive problems which involve psychiatric care. Dementia has overtaken cancer as the condition most feared by people approaching old age. Combating it has been made a national priority by the coalition government.
Professor McKeith says the risk of suffering from some form of dementia increases with age. It affects about 5% aged over 65, with the number increasing to 20% among the over 80s.
"Twenty years ago people would have said there’s nothing you can do about dementia. Now we are in a position where there are many things we can do. Each has a limited effect, but including drug treatments and other things we are making a change."
But he cautions: "It’s going to be evolutionary change not transformational change, by combining approaches and making small steps over a long sustained period. And that’s where we need the investment, to keep that going."
Demystifying dementia
Overcoming people’s fears and misconceptions about dementia is also important. And to that end Professor McKeith is full of praise for the play ‘Geordie Sinatra’, written by Fiona Evens, and performed for the first time at the Live Theatre, Newcastle, in early May 2012."It is a great play about somebody suffering from dementia with Lewy bodies. It’s demystifying dementia using humour and reality."
Contact Ian McKeith about his research.
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