Lockdown dementia with Jason Karlawish and Jennifer Watt

BMJ talk medicine

The pandemic had a high mortality toll in care homes, but measures to try and reduce that, through extreme social isolation, has had its own cost. Social interaction, particularly with close family, is more than just a quick hello - evidence shows that mental stimulation can help with cognitive decline, and the lack of that interaction may have hastened progression of dementia in some patients. In this podcast, the team talk about what GPs can do to support patients in care homes, and we find out about some non-drug interventions patients can try. Our guests; Jason Karlawish, is a geriatrician, and co-director of the Penn Memory Center, he's also author of the book "The Problem of Alzheimer's How Science, Culture, and Politics Turned a Rare Disease into a Crisis and What We Can Do About It" Jennifer Watt is a geriatrician, and assistant professor at the university of Toronto, and one of the authors of the recent systematic review and meta-analysis of comparative efficacy of interventions for reducing symptoms of depression in people with dementia - https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n532 Reading; Washington Post article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/09/16/coronavirus-dementia-alzheimers-deaths/?arc404=true Jason Karlawish and his book https://www.jasonkarlawish.com/the-problem-of-alzheimers This American Life episode: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/737/the-daily The Daily episode on aducanumab, "some hope is better than having no hope" https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/07/podcasts/the-daily/aduhelm-alzheimers-fda-drug.html