The End of Brain Disease Begins with Research

The End of Brain Disease Begins with Research

What would you consider our society’s most serious health problem – cancer, heart disease, obesity?

In fact, brain disorders hold top place. Currently they affect as many as a billion people worldwide – that is, one thousand million people – almost a sixth of the world’s total population and 25 times more people than the 39.5 million estimated to be infected with HIV/Aids.

This year’s Neurological Foundation Annual Appeal seeks to raise awareness about the immense human cost of neurological disorders and the urgent need for ongoing research to find the answers to these devastating diseases.

The situation is so dire that the World Health Organization warned in a major report released in February this year that unless immediate action is taken, the global burden of neurological disease will become a serious and unmanageable threat to public health.

The more than 1000 brain disorders include stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and migraine. Although they have a lower death rate than the top two killers, heart disease and cancer, brain disorders result in more long-term disability and chronic suffering than all other medical conditions combined.

Moreover, few have effective cures, or even a clear understanding of what causes them.

According to a study done by Johns Hopkins University, cases of Alzheimer’s disease alone are expected to quadruple to more than a 100 million worldwide by 2050, and 43 per cent of those afflicted will need a high level of care. More worryingly, a growing body of research suggests that diabetes and obesity also increase the risk of getting dementia, a factor not included in current projections.

But the burden of neurological disease also extends to younger people. Migraine, one of the most prevalent brain disorders, affects about 12 per cent of the population of all ages. Others, such as motor neuron disease, although rarer, carry huge costs for medical and supportive care and impose severe psychological burdens on families.

To ease this burden, ongoing investment needs to be made in research. The last few decades has seen major breakthroughs in our understanding of the brain, largely driven by technology. This has caused long-held theories about the way our brains function to be overturned. Many of these discoveries simply could not have been made a decade ago, because the key experimental methods such as functional magnetic resonance imaging or gene sequencing techniques were either nonexistent or inadequate.

Nonetheless, although scientists can now map gene function and activity, generate mature neurons from stem cells, and map complex information processing in the brain, they still do not know how to cure the tremor of Parkinson's disease, or how to help a child with autism to interact with the world around him.

In order to accelerate progress, we need a greater understanding of how brain disease begins, and of normal brain function. Such advances will allow us to better harness and enhance the innate ability of the nervous system to regenerate, repair, and adapt itself to illness and injury.

ENDS

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