Clinical Research Fellow

We are looking for a full-time Clinical Research Fellow which is being funded by Alzheimer Scotland.  The holder will be based in the Alzheimer Scotland Dementia Research Centre within the Department of Psychology.

The post holder will investigate predictors of dementia in Scottish longitudinal ageing cohorts. Full details of this post are available on the University of Edinburgh web site in the academic vacancies section - Vacancy Ref : 011083 -  http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/human-resources/jobs

Informal enquiries, which are encouraged, should be made to Professor John Starr ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. )

Closing date for applications is 4 April 2013.

Piloting the use of drama to explore experiences of early onset dementia and priorities for developing specialist support services

We are delighted to announce recently awarded pilot study funding to Nicholas Jenkins, Chancellor’s Fellow at the School of Health in Social Science, University of Edinburgh to:

•  Develop a collaboration with an award-winning playwright to host a one act play about the experience of early-onset dementia, to service users and staff at Alzheimer Scotland Lothian Early Onset Support Service, as well as senior managers and policy makers
  
  
• Facilitate post-play workshops with participants to explore their thoughts and reflections on the play, their experiences of early onset dementia and their priorities for health and social care policy and practice, thus collating key themes that will feed into shaping future research proposals
• Create professionally acted video-vignettes, co-directed by service users, which will serve as tools for future research and dissemination activities

In line with a participatory action research framework (11, this project represents the initial stages of a long-term research and knowledge exchange relationship with staff and families at Alzheimer Scotland’s Lothian Early Onset Support Service (LEOSS).  However, the digital vignettes will be made available to the wider research community for use, for example in qualitative studies of the impact of early onset dementia.

For further information, please email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. "> This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or telephone 0131 650 4028

Cognitive and behavioural predictors of survival in Alzheimer disease

It is very hard to predict how fast or slow someone who has just been diagnosed with dementia will progress, but this is often just what this person and their family are interested in. We looked at over 600 men and women diagnosed with Alzheimer disease ten years ago to see if any of the tests done in the clinic could predict who was going to do well. As you might expect, younger patients survived for longer, as did women compared to men. Scores on general memory tests did not predict how long someone survived for. However we found that people who had psychotic symptoms (delusions and hallucinations) at the time of diagnosis did less well than others, as did people scoring less well on one specific test. We need to do more research to see if we can help people stay well for longer by helping them with these things.

You can read the full report here: Russ TC, Batty GD & Starr JM. (2012) Cognitive and behavioural predictors of survival in Alzheimer disease: results from a sample of treated patients in a tertiary-referral memory clinic. International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry 27(8): 844-53.