Goals

  • Unravel disease mechanisms that lead to Alzheimer, Vascular Dementia, and the complex interaction between these two (e.g. how vascular disease promotes Alzheimer disease, and how Alzheimer disease leads to cerebrovascular pathology); 
  • Improve diagnostics; examples range from health care evaluation (e.g. clinical use of MRI diagnostics, neuropsychological evaluation, memory clinic versus GP diagnosis, to more fundamental diagnostic research questions (e.g. how to identify patients with amyloid angiopathy, how to identify blood-brain barrier dysfunction);
  • Develop prevention strategies: we propose that vascular interventions are a promising strategy to prevent both Alzheimer and Vascular dementia. Here we will collaborate with overlapping research programs that focus on vascular disease, exercise, and prevention, specifically Cerebrovascular Diseases, Prevention, Exercise-medicine, atherosclerosis and Thrombosis, but also Parkinson’s Disease;
  • Improve dementia care. It is irrational to believe that dementia can be completely prevented or cured; we can reduce the prevalence, but given the growing number of people at risk (mostly due to the aging society), we must maintain a strong focus on how we can provide the best care for these patients and their family, in order to preserve quality of life as much as possible.


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Research Research programs Dementia

Our purpose

We aim to encompass the burden of dementia on individuals with dementia and their caregivers (direct effects of the disease on quality of life, caregiver stress etc.) as well as the burden on society as a whole (e.g. health care costs).

Goals

See some of the most important goals for this research program.

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Research groups contributing to this research program

Allied health sciences

Philip van der Wees's research group aims to have a significant impact on people’s daily lives through research and education in allied healthcare.

Cerebrovascular physiology of aging and cognitive impairment

Jurgen Claassen's research group investigates links between cardiovascular disease and dementia, with focus on the role of cerebral perfusion. They conduct physiological research and translate this to clinical trials. 

Geriatric medicine

Marcel Olde Rikkert's research group focuses on resilience as the ability to resist, recover from and adapt to stressors. Monitoring, predicting and improving both mental and physical resilience is crucial as a patient with too little resilience will not have good outcomes. 

Spokesperson

dr. Jurgen Claassen MD, PhD

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Spokesperson

prof. dr. Edo Richard

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