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UCL Institute of Health Informatics

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Neurodegenerative disorders

We are using electronic health data to support the development of new treatments for mental health and neurological disorders.

What are we doing in this area?

Researchers are working on a wide range of projects including:

  • The role of chronic reactivating viruses as early triggers or accelerants of mild cognitive impairment and dementia onset.
  • The effect of various clinical infections on cognitive function, QOL or physical functioning in people with established dementia.
  • Development of a dementia phenotype to identify patients with this disease in linked primary care, hospital and mortality data. This work includes the computation of lifetime risks of dementia and of mortality associated with dementia diagnosis.
  • Investigation of modifiable risk factors for dementia, including BP, diabetes, lipid concentrations, smoking and AF.

Cognitive function and dementia

  • To validate cognition and measures of cognitive decline as surrogate marker for dementia
  • To understand whether risk factors for poor cognitive function are shared between different cognitive domains and to understand whether different forms of dementia share common causal pathways
  • To prioritise causal pathways easily targetable with readily available treatments/prevention strategies