Prevalence of dementia risk factors in the Oxford Brain Health Clinic

With promising disease-modifying therapies (DMTs) emerging and good evidence to support risk reduction in the delay of dementia onset and progression, it is important to understand the profile of patients attending memory assessment services to estimate what proportion of patients might benefit from different types of interventions. The Oxford Brain Health Clinic (OBHC) is a psychiatry-led, clinical-research service that offers memory clinic patients detailed clinical assessments and equal access to research opportunities as part of their secondary care pathway. In this work, we describe the characteristics of OBHC patients in terms of demographics, diagnoses and prevalence of potentially modifiable risk factors compared with a cohort of healthy volunteers and the average memory clinic population. Our results suggest that high research consent rates (91.5%) in the OBHC resulted in a highly representative cohort of the clinical population. Based on Lecanemab trial inclusion criteria, 24.6% of the OBHC population may be suitable for further investigation into DMTs. Furthermore, 67.4% of OBHC patients have at least one potentially modifiable risk factor that may benefit from lifestyle interventions, particularly those focused on depression, sleep and physical activity.