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The lives of celebrities including Pauline Quirke and Fiona Phillips have been struck by early-onset dementia in recent years. We asked expert Professor Nick Fox about how to reduce the risk
Birds of a Feather actress Pauline Quirke is one of 70,000 people in the UK living with early-onset dementia.
Her pal, Loose Women star Linda Robson, who famously teamed up with the mum-of-two in the long-running BBC sitcom, told the Sun at Monday night’s TV Choice Awards: “She doesn’t know who anybody is. She doesn’t know who I am or who her kids are. Dementia is terrible – I’d rather get cancer, because at least then you’ve got a chance.”
Professor Nick Fox, Group Leader in the UK Dementia Research Institute at UCL, called dementia the most “devastating health condition of our age”, saying of early-onset, which sees people diagnosed before 65: “You may lose the ability to work, the ability to drive. You may then lose friends who don’t quite know how to interact with you and ultimately the saddest loss of connection is not just with yourself but with loved ones because you no longer know them.”
The expert told us that while some of the risk factors of dementia had lowered, others were on the rise. “We know the key risk factors and some of them mean your risk of dementia at all ages has got slightly less for that particular age because of better blood pressure control that happened 20, 30 years ago,” he said. “So we’ve got these factors that we’re getting better at treating but on the other hand other risk factors are increasing like obesity and diabetes.”
Thankfully, there are sensible steps to take to try and reduce your risk of being diagnosed with the disease. “Most of the things that are good for your heart are also good for your brain,” said Prof Fox. “One of the drops we think that happened over the past 20 years in the prevalence of developing dementia in their 70s and 80s was because they got better blood pressure treatment in middle age.
“Alongside blood pressure are other things that we often call vascular risk factors – smoking, diabetes, high cholesterol – all the things that can clog up the arteries to your heart can clog up your brain. Those are really important things.
“There are other things that are not good for your brain like repeated head injury. As we’ve seen with lots of professional boxers, there’s damage. Then there’s just generally staying mentally and physically active.”
Some forms of early-onset dementia are genetic. In 2023, TV presenter Fiona Phillips said she had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s at the age of 62, with her mother, father and uncle also suffering from the disease. Between one in 15 and one in 20 people diagnosed with the brain disorder that gradually destroys memory and thinking skills, will be under the age of 65.
“It’s not rare but it’s a minority,” said our expert. “Very rarely it will be younger than that, often when there’s a genetic link. I will see people in my clinic who have had an onset of their dementia, of their Alzheimer’s Disease at 35 or at 30.”
If you are worried about early onset dementia or the genetic link to the condition, visit Rare Dementia Support.
