Please wait while the transcript is being prepared...
0:00
Hello, my name's John Hardy.
And together with my
colleague, Patrick Lewis,
I've been responsible
for putting together
the series of talks
which are in this series.
And I just thought it would
be worth spending some time
to put this series into a
kind of historical perspective
and explain why it's important,
what the history of research
in this area has been,
and in the final slide,
perhaps talk a little
bit about where
I think the future is for
this type of research.
0:35
Neurodegenerative diseases are
really the major health care
problem in the developed world now.
And I say the developed world,
but in fact, life expectancy
is increasing in the developing
world to an enormous extent,
as well.
And so we can see that this is a
problem which is going to be all
over the world over the next period.
The numbers are staggering.
Alzheimer's disease affects
1% at the age of 60, 20%
at the age of 80.
Parkinson's disease affects
1% over the age of 60.
The other diseases are rarer, but
altogether, probably affect about 1%
of the population.
And this means that in a
population of 50 million,
about 1.5 million will
be directly affected-- that means
diagnosed-- with one
of these diseases.
Of course, when I say 1.5 million directly affected,
each one of them will have relatives
who are indirectly affected.
There will be caregivers and
spouses and children and so on.
So indirectly affected will
be a far larger number.
And of course, as the population
ages-- all of these diseases
are age-related diseases--
this number will increase.