Seb Walsh
@sebwalsh.bsky.social
Public heath clinical academic focused on dementia and healthy ageing. Queen Mary University of London. Views own
The Nottingham Consensus provides a policy roadmap to reduce dementia risk, the UK's leading cause of death. Recommendations include: 📢 Launch a targeted public health campaign to address key modifiable risk factors 💬 Adapt communication strategies to ensure relevance across diverse communities
How do we prevent as much future dementia as possible? A one-page summary of my PhD research into population-level approaches to dementia risk reduction available here: www.cph.cam.ac.uk/sites/defaul... Full thesis here: www.repository.cam.ac.uk/items/e83e56...
🚨In this new systematic review in BMJ JECH, most of the 18 studies reported dynamic associations between lifecourse socioeconomic change and dementia risk. Highest risk for those born poor who stay poor. Eleanor Williams, @ilk21.bsky.social , Carol Brayne @cph.bsky.social
"Interventions that reduced socioeconomic inequalities were those implemented and enforced across entire populations/systems or... were supportive and tailored to the differing needs of individuals across socioeconomic groups in their design and delivery." bmjpublichealth.bmj.com/content/3/2/...
What works to reduce socioeconomic inequalities in hospitalisations and readmissions? Systematic review of the equity impacts of population-level, health service and integrative interventions
Inequalities exist in hospitalisation rates, which are undesirable and costly for health systems; with higher rates in populations with lower levels of income, education or residing in socioeconomical...
bmjpublichealth.bmj.com
Now on YouTube: Our Dementia Research Salon Livestream recording exploring #Dementia Risk Reduction - guest host Luis Tojo speaks with @sebwalsh.bsky.social, @simonesalemme.bsky.social & @timothydalyalz.bsky.social on prevention, policy & population health youtu.be/E12QCc5uWek
Population-level Dementia Risk Reduction
YouTube video by Dementia Researcher
youtu.be
Increases in social media use throughout early adolescence significantly associated with [small] lower performance in specific aspects of cognitive function Social Media Use Trajectories and Cognitive Performance in Adolescents jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...
Social Media Use Trajectories and Cognitive Performance in Adolescents
This study uses prospectively collected data from the ABCD study to assess the relationship between longitudinal patterns of social media use (hours per day) and cognitive performance after 2 years in...
jamanetwork.com
A privilege to represent the population health perspective, alongside Carol Brayne @cph.bsky.social , in this new @thelancet.com Series on #Alzheimer's disease. Expertly led by Giovanni Frisoni Alzheimer's disease outlook: controversies and future directions www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...
Alzheimer's disease outlook: controversies and future directions
For the first time, reductions in cerebral β-amyloid pathology load and rate of cognitive and functional decline have been achieved in Alzheimer's disease, through pharmacological intervention in rand...
thelancet.com
Out of 800+ studies on blood-based biomarkers for Alzheimer's, not a single one measured actual changes in patient outcomes. doi.org/10.1136/bmj-...
Evidence gap in blood biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease
Willem van Gool and colleagues argue that moves to use blood biomarkers in clinical practice or population screening are inappropriate without evidence on outcomes important to patients and carers T...
doi.org
A key (too often ignored) aspect of Alzheimer's research is translation of findings between familial disease, specialist clinics, and general population. In this piece we identify key unanswered research questions and describe a framework for knowledge integration. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Key questions for the future of amyloid research in dementia: a framework for integrating complex datasets - Molecular Psychiatry
Molecular Psychiatry - Key questions for the future of amyloid research in dementia: a framework for integrating complex datasets
nature.com
Nice write-up of the RETREAT-FRAIL trial from @nejm.org paper by John Mandrola in the Sensible Medicine substack www.sensible-med.com/p/evidence-t... (Paper: www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....)
Evidence, The Elderly and Common Sense
A recent trial presented at the ESC meeting addresses the question of reducing blood pressure meds in the elderly. It’s an important study—for numerous reasons.
sensible-med.com
New paper with Janet Janbek using 🇩🇰 registry data to examine prevalence/co-occurrence of dementia risk factors. 82% of people >65 have multiple risk factors, speaking to the need for upstream public health action. More work soon from this collaboration! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Prevalence and co-occurrence of dementia risk factors in Denmark: A nationwide study
The clustering of dementia risk factors is common and has implications for policies targeting risk reduction.To estimate the prevalence of 16 dementia…
sciencedirect.com
We assume that the built environment affects how active we are but solid evidence lacking. Important paper from 🇺🇸 using📱data to show moving from less walkable neighbourhood to more, or vice versa, has meaningful effect on activity, sustained 3 months after moving www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Countrywide natural experiment links built environment to physical activity - Nature
By analysing the smartphone data of 2,112,288 participants, in particular observing and comparing the activity of the same individual in two different environments, we find that increases in the walka...
nature.com
What evidence do we have on the Social Determinants of Dementia (SDOD)? Delighted that this scoping review, a year or so in the making, is now published in @alzdemjournals.bsky.social. Expertly led by Anouk Geraets, we identified... doi.org/10.1002/alz.... 1/
Making social sciences foundational to academic medicine - putting the 'social' into 'social determinants of health'. dx.plos.org/10.1371/jour...
Making social sciences foundational to academic medicine
In this Perspective, Sahar Sadjadi and colleagues discuss the imperative for incorporating social sciences into medical research, education and implementation.
dx.plos.org
Adherence to four dietary indices and the risk of all‐cause and cause‐specific dementia: Findings from the UK Biobank study - Carrasco‐Marín - Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism - Wiley Online Library dom-pubs.pericles-prod.literatumonline.com/doi/10.1111/...
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Dementia and the disappearing subject: a framing analysis of drugs for dementia in UK news media doi.org/10.1016/j.ss...
Redirecting
doi.org
Analyses from Sweden suggesting that cognitive reserve is really rooted in early life, with limited opportunity therefore to affect this in adulthood. Supported by findings from the 1946 birth cohort in the UK doi.org/10.1002/alz....
A lifespan perspective on cognitive reserve and risk for dementia
INTRODUCTION We addressed whether higher education plays a causal role in reducing dementia risk by comparing two indices of cognitive reserve: education and young adult general cognitive ability (G...
doi.org
Issue with PAFs for dementia are that we could never actually achieve risk factor eradication So, in 🇳🇿 , Etu Ma'u has led modelling of 15-25% reductions in risk factors (still ambitious) and shown meaningful PIFs over time, esp for Maori and Pacific peoples doi.org/10.1002/alz....
Delighted to see the final paper from my PhD published in BMJ Public Health. A scoping review of dementia primary prevention policies in England: do they balance reach and agency? 1/ bmjpublichealth.bmj.com/content/3/1/...
Scoping review of dementia primary prevention policies in England: do they balance reach and agency?
Objectives To ascertain the balance of dementia risk reduction policies in England, considering their reach (population-wide vs targeted at specific individuals) and agency (the level of resource requ...
bmjpublichealth.bmj.com
>10 years old but still as relevant - 10 tips for progressing from PhD to PI from @martinwhite33.bsky.social fuseopenscienceblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/from...
From PhD to PI in ten 'easy' steps
Our warts-and-all account of what it's like to do public health research.
fuseopenscienceblog.blogspot.com
Next up is Prof Ngaire Kerse with a lot of great updates on what's happening in Aotearoa for dementia care and population level risk reduction. Look @sebwalsh.bsky.social it's your equali-tree! #ANZSGM2025
A couple of months ago in @bmj.com (I’m that far behind!). This is something we should care about. We need a medical workforce that is diverse and who can relate to patients and others in the MDT.
Interested in how we lower the population's risk of developing? Check out the refreshed webpages of our research group, including an up to date Evidence Hub. Interested in learning more? Get in touch! coghealth.net.au/population-b...
The Limited Role of Alzheimer Disease Blood-Based Biomarkers in Primary Care jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...
The Limited Role of Alzheimer Disease Blood-Based Biomarkers in Primary Care
This Viewpoint examines the use of blood-based biomarkers to test for Alzheimer disease and outlines why they should not be the first or only tool used in screening for cognitive impairment.
jamanetwork.com
V important paper from Sarah and team on external validity of cognitive assessment studies. Non-response in cognitive studies is not random - people not taking part are older, have lower cognition, and reduced functioning. Must weight analyses! alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
Factors associated with non‐participation in the Healthy Cognitive Ageing Project
BACKGROUND Understanding cognitive decline trajectories is crucial for dementia prevention, as many cases go undetected. Identifying participation biases in such studies is essential for data validi.....
alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
In population-based study (Kungsholmen), NPVs high but PPVs for blood based biomarkers 30% for single biomarkers, 45% for combination. Median follow-up 10 years. Just can't see how screening could ever be feasible with these kinds of values www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Blood-based biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease and incident dementia in the community - Nature Medicine
In a community-based cohort of more than 2,000 older adults from Sweden, blood biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease were able to predict dementia up to 16 years before disease onset.
nature.com
In this Chinese population-based sample, we found that health behaviours were more strongly linked to living longer without getting dementia, compared to APOE e4 genotype. Though we didn't see any compression of the dementia morbidity (once it occurred) doi.org/10.1002/alz....
Shingles vaccination programme in Wales appears to be associated with reduction in dementia risk. Healthcare records aren't a perfect way of capturing dementia incidence but this is a potentially important finding rdcu.be/egagG
A natural experiment on the effect of herpes zoster vaccination on dementia
Nature - Using a natural experiment that avoids common bias concerns, this study finds that the live-attenuated shingles vaccine reduced the probability of a new dementia diagnosis within a...
rdcu.be
