The programme of the 34th Alzheimer Europe Conference included seven special symposia, two of which were organised by Alzheimer Europe:
SS1 "Preparing for new AD treatments"
At Special Symposium 1, “Preparing for new AD treatments”, organised by Alzheimer Europe, chaired by Director for Research Angela Bradshaw and supported by the gold sponsorship from Lilly, four speakers shared the stage. First up was Jan Runar Eliassen (Norway), a member of the EWGPWD, who shared his personal perspective as a person with early-onset Alzheimer’s dementia. He was diagnosed at the age of 45 which was a huge shock for him and his family. “In Norway, we are proud of our health care”, he said, “but care regarding people with dementia has a long way to go”. Jan Runar and his family have had little or no contact or support within their local community since the diagnosis and this is sadly far from a unique story. “When I travel around Norway this is something I hear all over”, he said. Thankfully, he and his wife have established good contact with the Norwegian Health Associations and he was asked to be a member of their working group for people with dementia and, more recently, was nominated to the EWGPWD as well. These groups and contacts, as well as joining Norway’s “Dementia Choir”, a television programme inspired by that of the BBC in the UK, have been a saving grace for Jan Runar and his family. In closing, he stated that his sincere wish for the future of dementia care is that “no one should feel they are alone with this disease”.
Cath Mummery spoke about “Moving from research to clinical practice in the treatment of AD”. Her presentation highlighted that dementia services are currently primarily community based and are insufficiently resourced, while clinical trials environments are highly-regulated, well-resourced and typically manage patients with minimal comorbidities. The arrival of disease-modifying therapies, and the beginning of a treatment era in dementia, “provides a golden opportunity to reshape services, improve access to diagnostics and reframe conceptualisation of dementia”, she said. However, she also emphasised the importance of bridging the gap between the ‘real world’ and clinical trials. She explored some of the questions that arise from this, and what might be done “to start a journey towards access for all to a biological diagnosis and treatments for dementias.”
The next speaker was Julius Popp, head of the Centre for Cognitive Disorders and Alzheimer’s disease at the Hirslanden Hospital Zürich and the head of the research group Biomarkers and Neuropsychiatry at the University of Zürich. He pointed out that “the use of biomarkers is often recommended, but is currently still limited by their relative invasiveness, limited availability, and costs.” He also said that with new drug therapies targeting specific brain pathologies, biomarkers would become mandatory to determine the presence of pathology and to evaluate the therapy effects on this pathology. Finally, he stated that “blood-based biomarkers and other non-invasive markers will become available for clinical practice in the near future. These developments will lead to a much broader utilisation of biomarkers and accelerate the development of tailored prevention and treatment approaches.”
The fourth and final speaker at this symposium was Leonie Visser, PhD, Amsterdam UMC, who began her talk on the paradigm shift in healthcare and professional-patient communication with the assertion that "initiating disease-modifying treatment for AD is a preference-sensitive decision. Shared decision-making is not a new concept, yet it is even more important but also complex, because of the uncertainties regarding the benefits, risk of side effects, and burden of administration and monitoring”. She also noted that, in order to encourage patient engagement and support meaningful conversations about disease-modifying treatment initiation, educational materials and communication tools are needed, and that these should be developed taking a co-creation approach.
SS3 “Dementia Researchers of the future”
The symposium “Dementia researchers of the future” was organised by the Alzheimer Europe Foundation and the INTERDEM Academy, thanks to the support of the silver sponsorship of Biogen. This session afforded a great opportunity to ten early stage researchers, who were selected by our jury to benefit from bursaries to attend and present at the conference. The selection of these ten bursaries was based on the best average scores each received from the jury members. Iva Holmerová (Czechia) and Fania Dassen (Netherlands) co-chaired this special symposium, and the ten researchers who presented their work were:
• SS3-01 Özlem Çiçek Doğan (Turkey): Understanding the experiences of individuals with dementia and their caregivers after the Turkey-Syria earthquakes: a qualitative study
• SS3-02 Natalia Soldevila-Domenech (Spain): Predictors of the cognitive response to multimodal lifestyle interventions for cognitive decline prevention: pooled analysis of four clinical trials
• SS3-03 Electra Chatzidimitriou (Greece): The predictive value of social cognition assessment over and above neuroimaging for 1-year functional outcomes in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia
• SS3-04 Raphaella Paradisi (Greece): Modified Cued Recall test for the diagnosis of dementia of the Alzheimer's type in a Greek population of adults with Down syndrome: a validation study
• SS3-05 Matěj Kučera (Czech Republic): The role of risk factors in development of cognitive disorders and cognitive decline in the Czech Republic and the Netherlands: comparative SHARE prospective study
• SS3-06 Eda Atay (Turkey): The effect of cognitive stimulation therapy on apathy, loneliness, anxiety and activities of daily living in elderly individuals diagnosed with Alzheimer's
• SS3-07 Nina Stopar (Slovenia): Risk factors for dementia among patients in memory clinic • SS3-08 Marina Makri (Greece): An innovative online educational program on Neurodegenerative Genetic Counseling developed in Greece, Germany, Belgium, Spain and Turkey
• SS3-09 Gabriela Początek (Poland): The meanings of the life story of a person living with dementia and their tendency to "wander"-the narrative perspective of Polish caregivers
• SS3-10 Anja Mrhar (Slovenia): The effect of individual characteristics on the level of nutrition related knowledge: exploratory study for older adults across levels of cognitive impairment.
Other special symposia
The five other symposia that took place during the event were:
• SS2 “Enhancing impact: bridging dementia research and practice” was organised by Dutch project DEMPACT.
• SS4 "European platforms advancing dementia detection, diagnosis and care” was supported by Gates Ventures.
• SS6 "Digital devices and psychosocial interventions: challenges and issues" was organised by the Fondation Médéric Alzheimer.
• SS8 "New dementia assistive technologies to transform lives: Presenting the innovators of the Longitude Prize on Dementia" was sponsored by the Longitude Prize on Dementia delivered by Challenge Works in partnership with Alzheimer's Society and Innovate UK.
• SS9 "Support for care giving relatives in continence care" was organised by Essity.
