dementia facts

• 44 million
  globally have dementia
• 135 million
  will have the disease in 2050
• By then
  71%
  will be poor and middle income
• $600bn
  global cost of dementia
• In the UK, cancer research gets
  8x
  as much funding as dementia

Source: Alzheimer's Society

The research group, which combines university and industry scientists, looked for differences in the blood of 452 healthy people, 220 with mild cognitive impairment and 476 with Alzheimer's disease.

They were able to tell with 87% accuracy which patients with mild cognitive impairment would go on to develop Alzheimer's disease in the next year.

"We want to be able to identify people to enter clinical trials earlier than they currently do and that's really what we've been aiming at," said lead researcher Prof Simon Lovestone from the University of Oxford. bbc