‘My wife lives in a new world’

The legend of the automobile races Sir Jackie Stewart he emotionally told the moment when his wife has forgotten who he was, since his charity finances a new blood test for dementia.

The three -time F1 champion said Lady Stewart asked “Where is Jackie?” While he was sitting with him.

He said that the changes he had seen in his wife were the reason why he had founded Race against dementia, which is financing a new blood examination process developed by the University of Cambridge.

The study hopes to detect signs of frontotemporal dementia decades before it develops.

The same type of dementia was diagnosed in Lady Stewart in 2014 and Sir Jackie said that the behavior and linguistic changes he had witnessed were “horrendous”.

“Just the other day was dinner time, he is getting up and I’m sitting nearby and she says:” Where is Jackie? “It is the first time that it happened and it’s just a few weeks ago,” he said.

“A bad feeling came on me,” he added, describing the mind of Lady Stewart as “a new world”.

Sir Jackie, who lives in Buckinghamshire but comes from Scotland, described how a dementia had been diagnosed with his wife of over 60 years after losing control of his little car and landed on the roof.

Nobody had been injured, he said, but the accident had led to “awareness that something was wrong”.

A decade later, Sir Jackie said that the progression of the disease was such that Lady Stewart could no longer walk.

“I know that Helen doesn’t mean when suddenly turns and hits me, or the nurses (specialist dementia),” he said.

“He can hit someone quite often, he uses a language he has never said in his life and arrives like this (click on the fingers) and I say” honey, treasure, do not say it “.

“He says ‘why?’ And it will give me a row to do it.

‘“Sunday” It is a common feature of dementia, in which the brain tires and one person becomes more agitated later during the day.

Sir Jackie has created a house accessible in Switzerland for Lady Stewart without steps or obstacles – and employ specialized nurses and neurosurgeons.

He said he was aware of the privilege that his career as F1 had offered him and that for many families the only option was residential care.

“Visit houses for people with dementia and leaving in tears because people are completely lost,” he said.

One in three person will develop dementia in their life, which Sir Jackie describes as a “disaster”.

He said friends and a former secretary had also been diagnosed and understanding the brain was “bigger than going to the moon”.

The progress of the research had been “very slow”, with the medical profession “failing so far” and diseases such as cancer that was priority, said.

His charity is now financing the development of a new test of blood tests to detect signs of front -time dementia from 10 to 20 years before it is diagnosed.

Dr. Maura Malpetti, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge, said that the on -Incumo study examined the type of front -time dementia that was not genetic, where the diagnoses could not necessarily be expected.

Dr. Malpetti said that people with front -time dementia have often been erroneously diagnosed.

“It is confused with psychiatric conditions due to behavioral changes or linguistic problems,” he said.

His team is examining how the presence of some blood proteins could indicate the probability of future inflammation in the brain.

The changes in the blood could be present decades before the start of physical symptoms and usually they were collected only by scans, which took more time to perform and required specialist equipment.

A serious problem that has to face studies for new dementia drugs is that they often involve patients who have already received a diagnosis.

It means that they are already showing symptoms, but at this point it could be too late because drugs make the difference.

Identifying people decades before they show symptoms allows researchers to try drugs to see if they reduce the risk of dementia.

Three hundred patients were recruited in 20 centers in England and dr. Malpetti said that the study eventually would be launched to 1,000 participants.

The study is one of the numerous blood tests of dementia developed in the United Kingdom, including one al University of Oxford.

Dr. Malpetti said he hopes to see “terrible” developments in the next five years due to the number of inflammation studies.

“I think there has been a revelation in the field of blood tests because this allows us to use more accessible and scalable tests,” he said.

Dr. Malpetti said they would frowned the champions so that if a new marker of inflammation had been discovered, they could go back and test him in the blood.

He added a previous diagnosis to allow families, allowing them to contribute to research to find a cure.

“First we understand the changes in the brain, perhaps we can stop or slow down the symptoms while the person is still well,” he said.

Sir Jackie said that Formula 1 brought funding and acumen of business to health research.

The most recent fundraising was the A challenge of the Giro In front of the Bahrain Grand Prix.

“When you have a problem in Formula 1 (click on your fingers) is solved … they are also changing it (technology) always, because they have enthusiasm and see the results,” he said.

Dr. Malpetti said he hoped that charity bodies such as Race Against Dementia could transform research, helping to progress faster.

Sir Jackie said he hoped that a cure could be found in his life.

“I want this to happen as much as I wanted to be world champion,” he said. “It’s terribly important.”

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