Submitted by J. Grosse on Mon, 16/10/2023 - 10:16
Why is there such a great variation in the health of older people? Although people tend to enjoy better health as they age than previous generations, there are still large individual differences in health, mobility and cognition between older people of the same age. A multi-million dollar contract from Wellcome Leap’s Dynamic Resilience programme, jointly funded with Temasek Trust, has been awarded to scientists to address this question.
Prof David Rubinsztein from CIMR is part of an international collaboration, led by Professor Evandro Fei Fang from the University of Oslo. The research will focus on delirium, an acute state of mental confusion that is very common among people over 70 who are hospitalized for infection, injury or surgery, and which can lead to frailty progression and/or dementia. The project aims to understand at the molecular and cellular level why some people are more at risk of delirium and its sequelae, like dementia. If successful their findings could have immediate clinical applications.
David Rubinsztein says: “I am excited to be part of this international and multidisciplinary collaboration tackling an important problem in ageing and dementia research. We are very grateful to the funders for this opportunity.”
Other partners in the project include Professor Leiv Otto Watne at UiO and Akershus University Hospital and Professor Geir Selbæk at UiO and the Norwegian National Centre for Ageing and Health, who are national experts in delirium and dementia respectively. British partners include Professor Guang Yang at Imperial College London, and MindRank Technologies Limited, a company working on artificial intelligence (AI).