The 6th annual Recent Advances in Young Onset Dementia conference took place on 22 April 2026.
St George’s Hospital in Tooting has hosted the meeting since its launch in 2020, and this year was intended to mark its move to the new City St George’s campus in Clerkenwell following the university merger.
However, due to unforeseen circumstances, the event was held virtually, with all participants joining online. Despite this, engagement remained high, with questions and detailed discussion after each presentation.
As in previous years, the programme reflected the evolving landscape of dementia and cognitive neurology, an aspect of this conference which I particularly enjoy and which brings me back each year.
New topics included digital health in dementia, cognitive complaints in autism, Functional Cognitive Disorder, and biomarkers in Alzheimer’s disease.
Young Onset Dementia – Dr Kuven Moodley (St George’s Hospital)
Dr Moodley opened with an overview of young onset dementia and a structured approach to cognitive decline. He emphasised the significance of determining the rate of progression (acute, subacute or chronic) highlighting that neurodegeneration is more likely in slowly progressive cases. He noted the broader differential diagnosis in younger patients – he personally uses the surgical sieve approach. He also stressed the importance of considering neuropsychological contributors such as pain, sleep disturbance and mood disorders in younger patients with cognitive complaints.
Biomarkers in Dementia – Dr Askvini Keshavan, (UCL)
Dr Keshavan gave an overview of biomarkers in dementia, a topic of huge interest for clinicians currently working in this area, myself included. She emphasised that testing should occur only in an appropriate clinical context and by clinicians who feel confident interpreting the results. She highlighted advances in blood based biomarkers, in particular plasma ptau217 which has the highest sensitivity and specificity for identifying Alzheimer’s pathology. She also discussed the ongoing ADAPT trial (that she is leading) which is assessing whether ptau217 can reliably distinguish Alzheimer’s disease from other causes of cognitive impairment in memory clinics. Personally, I’m looking forward to seeing the results as this could be a game changer for those of us working in cognitive and memory clinics.
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Neuroradiology in Dementia – Dr Phil Rich (St George’s Hospital)
Dr Rich discussed neuroimaging in cognitive disorders, emphasising MRI as firstline in younger patients due to the wider differential, with CT being more acceptable in older patients with typical presentations. He stressed the importance of giving detailed clinical information when ordering a scan – what exactly are the cognitive deficits, how fast is the progression, are there neurological signs, family history etc. I was particularly interested in the discussion around cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) as this condition is attracting increased attention among clinicians working in dementia.
Language Disorders – Prof Peter Garrard, (St George’s Hospital)
Prof Garrard presented an overview of language disorders with a focus on aphasia. He described the Mini Linguistic State Examination (MLSE), a 15–20 minute bedside tool assessing five language domains (phonology, semantics, syntax, motor speech and working memory) to assist with diagnosis. He walked through numerous cases and demonstrated how using the MLSE can help determine subtypes of aphasia and other language disorders.
Cognitive Complaints in Autism – Dr Richard Cole, (King’s College London)
Dr Cole explored the relationship between autism and cognitive impairment and scrutinised many of the recent studies. He concluded that dementia risk may be higher in autism, especially those with intellectual disability, but the risk may diminish when adjusting for comorbid risk factors such as hypertension, hypercholesterolaemia, depression and diabetes and, as is often the case, further research is needed to draw firm conclusions.
Functional Cognitive Disorder – Dr Jeremy Isaacs, (St George’s Hospital)
Dr Isaacs discussed Functional Cognitive Disorder (FCD) a strong academic interest of his. He explored the definition and core criteria for diagnosis (Ball et al, 2020). He emphasised making a positive diagnosis by identifying internal inconsistency and variability. He outlined some features which may help distinguish FCD from neurodegeneration – FCD patients are more likely to attend alone, they provide detailed symptom accounts, they often function well day-to-day and are not perceived as impaired by others.
Digital Health in Dementia – Prof Derek Hill, (UCL)
Prof Hill examined the role of Digital Health Technologies (DHTs) in dementia. He discussed the increasing number of people using wearables and smartphone apps to monitor themselves and their health. However, he cautioned about interpreting data from these sources, as many factors can influence symptoms (known as ‘variability’) – he cited a Parkinson’s disease study (Roussos et al., 2022) showing that external factors like weather can greatly effect symptoms.
Emerging Therapies – Dr Wei Zhang, (St George’s Hospital)
Dr Zhang guided the audience through emerging antiamyloid therapies, focusing on donanemab and lecanemab. She reviewed the controversial Cochrane review (Nonino et al, 2026), which concluded that antiamyloid therapies have “no clinically meaningful effect.” She pushed back against this and highlighted the methodological limitations of their review, most notably the pooling of newer drugs with older, less effective ones such as solanezumab and gantenerumab, potentially diluting signals in efficacy and skewing the data. It was enlightening to hear an expert give her analysis of a paper that sparked debate amongst clinicians working in dementia.
The day concluded with two interesting case discussions:
Dr Camilla Clarke, (St George’s Hospital)
Dr Clarke presented the case of a young man with persistent cognitive symptoms after a sports related head injury. She walked through her management of the case and discussed predictors of prolonged symptoms after head injury, the most significant of which are pre-injury anxiety and depression.
Dr Oliver Cousins, (St George’s Hospital)
Dr Cousins presented a middle-aged man with new delusions, marital breakdown and a family history of young onset dementia. He teased out differentials, including psychosis in young onset dementia and a primary psychiatric disorder, and he discussed investigations including genetic testing.
In the closing remarks, Prof Garrard thanked the organising team for their contributions, and the delegates for their engagement. The conference team was delighted to receive excellent feedback, and they’re already planning the programme for the coming year.
References:
Ball, H. A., McWhirter, L., Ballard, C., Bhome, R., Blackburn, D. J., Edwards, M. J., Fleming, S. M., Fox, N. C., Howard, R., Huntley, J., Isaacs, J. D., Larner, A. J., Nicholson, T. R., Pennington, C. M., Poole, N., Price, G., Price, J. P., Reuber, M., Ritchie, C., Rossor, M. N., … Carson, A. J. (2020). Functional cognitive disorder: dementia’s blind spot. Brain : a journal of neurology, 143(10), 2895–2903. https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awaa224
Roussos, G., Herrero, T. R., Hill, D. L., Dowling, A. V., L T M Müller, M., Evers, L. J. W., Burton, J., Derungs, A., Fisher, K., Kilambi, K. P., Mehrotra, N., Bhatnagar, R., Sardar, S., Stephenson, D., Adams, J. L., Ray Dorsey, E., & Cosman, J. (2022). Identifying and characterising sources of variability in digital outcome measures in Parkinson’s disease. NPJ digital medicine, 5(1), 93. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-022-00643-4
Nonino, F., Minozzi, S., Sambati, L., Del Giovane, C., Baldin, E., Bassi, MC., De Santis, C., Gonzalez- Lorenzo, M., Vignatelli, L., Filippini, G., & Richard, E. (2026). Amyloid-beta-targeting monoclonal antibodies for people with mild cognitive impairment or mild dementia due to Alzheimer’s disease. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2026(4), CD016297. doi.org [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
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