Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department provides funding to research (a) understanding and (b) treatment of Lewy Body dementia.

The Government is strongly committed to supporting research into dementia. In 2019 we committed to double funding for dementia research. We will double funding for dementia research to £160 million per year by 2024/25. The Department funds research via the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) and has provided funding to research which seeks to increase understanding and treatment of Lewy Body dementia. For example, NIHR Programmes spent almost £1.8 million on research in this remit over the past five years. NIHR infrastructure is dedicated to supporting research across all disease and therapy areas, including research into Lewy Body dementia, funded by public funders, medical research charities and the life sciences industry.

Examples of projects funded by the NIHR include the £1.6 million COBALT study which investigates whether adding the drug Memantine to existing medications (acetylcholinesterase inhibitors) improves overall health and function for people with Lewy Body dementia and Parkinson’s disease dementia.

Through an NIHR-funded project, DIAMOND-Lewy, researchers from Newcastle University and University of Cambridge have created a Management Toolkit for better diagnosis and disease management of Lewy Body dementia. The guide is designed to be used by practitioners to facilitate the detection of Lewy Body dementia in patients.