Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what funding his Department provides for research on (a) the potential links between vitamin D deficiency and dementia and (b) prevention of dementia.

Research on all aspects of dementia, including prevention, is a high Government priority. Investment in dementia research by the Department’s National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) has more than doubled from £12.6 million in 2009-10 to £26.8 million in 2013-14.

The NIHR Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care for the South West Peninsula has funded research on potential links between vitamin D deficiency and dementia. Researchers at the University of Exeter Medical School conducted the study with researchers in France and the United States and the findings were published in the journal Neurology in August this year. The research concluded that vitamin D deficiency is associated with a substantially increased risk of all-cause dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

The NIHR is funding a range of research relating to dementia prevention through its programmes and research infrastructure. For example, the NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre is carrying out research to improve early recognition of individuals at risk of dementia or stroke and test pragmatic interventions to improve prevention.

The NIHR South London and Maudsley Dementia Biomedical Research Unit is researching risk stratification models for prediction of dementia onset, derived in patient cohorts. The NIHR is also funding a study aiming to find a more efficient way of detecting people with cognitive decline, particularly in memory, greater than that expected for an individual’s age and education level but that does not interfere notably with activities of daily life. This research will facilitate future large-scale, pragmatic intervention studies directed at preventing or slowing decline into dementia.

The NIHR continues to welcome funding applications for research into any aspect of human health, including dementia prevention. These applications are subject to peer review and judged in open competition, with awards being made on the basis of the importance of the topic to patients and health and care services, value for money and scientific quality.