Dave Crowley

Our partners at @edfenergy are offering households free electric blankets, heaters and debt support to help vulnerable households this winter 💙 If you're affected by dementia and struggling with energy costs, speak to your energy provider to find out what support may be available and ensure you’re accessing the help you’re entitled to. Read more here: express.co.uk/finance/person…

A first-of-its-kind clinical trial could cut years from the search for treatments that work for people with Alzheimer’s disease. The national trial, called AD-SMART, will test multiple drugs simultaneously, starting with two repurposed medicines already used to treat type 2 diabetes and ADHD. Testing drugs that are already approved to treat other conditions and known to be safe means that, if successful, treatments can reach people living with Alzheimer’s much faster than a medicine developed from scratch. Trials like this, which test multiple drugs simultaneously, have been successfully used across other diseases such as cancer. Now we hope to see dementia research follow in their footsteps to speed up advances. We know that people affected by dementia are eager to see effective drug options, so it's fantastic to see an innovative trial like AD-SMART recruiting patients. The national trial is led by the UK Dementia Research Institute and Alzheimer’s Research UK, in partnership with the National Institute for Health and Care Research, the Medical Research Council and Health Data Research UK, with ongoing funding committed by UK government to support the trial.