Eating, drinking and swallowing (EDS) difficulty is common in dementia and earlier identification could reduce morbidity, mortality, healthcare costs and improve quality of care. A proactive and condition-specific strategy for identifying EDS difficulty at an early stage for people living with dementia has yet to be developed. Before this can be achieved, holistic person-centred early indicators of EDS difficulty in early-stage dementia are needed and more understanding of barriers to early identification is required.
Research
DRNI Members Research is a list of ongoing and completed research carried out by DRNI members.
You can search via project type, disease, or Principal Investigator/Researcher name.
Search
Research type
Disease area
IN-MIND is a four country FP7 European funded project which seeks to develop and validate online tools to help doctors assess if an individual’s lifestyle supports long term brain health. The project also generate personal strategies for adopting a brain healthy lifestyle and provide on-line supports to help people in midlife implement and adhere to positive change.
To develop accessible best practice guidelines for post-diagnostic dementia supports for people with an intellectual disability in Ireland. The project aims to:
(1) examine the current landscape of post-diagnostic care at a national level;
(2) consider barriers to access;
(3) incorporate existing best practices; and
(4) give due consideration of the experiences and recommendations of people with an intellectual disability living with dementia and of their families/carers.
IDS-TILDA is a longitudinal study researching ageing in Ireland among people with an intellectual disability aged 40 and over (n=approximately 750 people). Individuals with an intellectual disability, particularly those with Down Syndrome are at an increased risk of developing an Alzheimer’s related dementia. The IDS-TILDA collects information on Intellectual Disability and Dementia.
IDS-TILDA is a longitudinal study researching ageing in Ireland among people with an intellectual disability aged 40 and over (n=approximately 750 people). Individuals with an intellectual disability, particularly those with Down Syndrome are at an increased risk of developing an Alzheimer’s related dementia. The IDS-TILDA collects information on Intellectual Disability and Dementia.
The successful treatment of memory impairments and neurodegenerative disorders critically depends on our understanding of the storage and recollection of memory episodes. Specifically, an understanding of the interaction between amnesic and neurodegenerative syndromes would aid the development of effective treatments. One of the key questions in neuroscience is: how do brain networks encode experience-dependent memory? Answering this question will give us a universal tool to treat multiple brain disorders.
Project Aim(s): The objective is the assessment of the impact of alterations of white matter tract integrity on effective connectivity in the neural network underpinning working memory. Using brain imaging data it will examine the associations between brain structure and function in young and older healthy participants and how normal ageing alters the relationship between structure and function.
Increased knowledge about the pre-clinical and early clinical stages of Alzheimer's disease (AD) will be key in developing preventative strategies for the disease as well as development of therapeutic treatment strategies. In addition, this approach will contribute to the development of biomarkers for the early diagnosis of AD.
In 2013, the Irish National Audit of Dementia audited 35 acute hospitals in the Republic of Ireland, interviewing the senior hospital managers and geriatricians; directly observing the environment/ interviewing the clinical nurse manager of 77 wards, and reviewing 660 healthcare records of people with dementia who had been admitted to the hospitals.
As part of the BIOMARKPD initiative the Irish Network for Biomarkers in Neurodegeneration (IN-BIND) was established. It is a research infrastructure aimed at creating a functional network for clinical and laboratory based scientists working in this area. Similar to BIOMARKPD, the aims of IN-BIND are the standardisation of biomarker measurement across Ireland and Europe to include i) sample collection, ii) measurement, iii) and interpretation.