Dementia costs £23 billion a year and is preventable

Britain’s dementia crisis is worse than feared and costs Britain £23bn a year – more than cancer and heart disease combined – but receives a fraction of the funding, according to a study published today. The number of people with dementia, at 822,000, is 17% higher than has previously been estimated and will pass the 1 million mark before 2025, the Oxford university study has found. But the single most important prevention message for Alzheimers and memory prevention – that is the need to test for high homocysteine, reversible with high dose B vitamins, still isn’t being reported, let alone acted upon by UK GPs.