Udeh‐Momoh, C.T., Maina, R., Anazodo, U.C. et al. (46 more authors) (2024) Dementia risk reduction in the African context: multi‐national implementation of multimodal strategies to promote healthy brain aging in Africa (the Africa‐FINGERS project). Alzheimer's & Dementia, 20 (12). pp. 8987-9003. ISSN 1552-5260
Abstract
Dementia prevention in Africa is critically underexplored, despite the continent's high prevalence of modifiable risk factors. With a predominantly young and middle-aged population, Africa presents a prime opportunity to implement evidence-based strategies that could significantly reduce future dementia cases and mitigate its economic impact. The multinational Africa-FINGERS program offers an innovative solution, pioneering culturally sensitive, multidomain interventions tailored to the unique challenges of the region. Leveraging insights from landmark global studies such as Worldwide-FINGERS and Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative, the program employs a multideterminant precision prevention framework, grounded in community based systems dynamics. Africa-FINGERS further integrates cutting-edge state-of-the-art multimodal biomarker evaluations tailored to regional contexts, with the goal of advancing brain health and establishing a global standard for dementia prevention. This groundbreaking initiative highlights the potential for scalableand sustainable interventions, thus is poised to transform dementia risk reduction efforts across the continent.
Highlights Dementia rates are escalating in Africa, largely due to longer life spans and increased prevalence of modifiable risk factors. Yet, few regional interventions have directly targeted lifestyle factors to reduce dementia risk. The multinational Africa-FINGERS study will address this gap by adapting the successful FINGERS lifestyle intervention to African populations. Africa-FINGERS will pioneer a culturally informed, multidomain dementia risk reduction intervention in the African region through feasibility dementia prevention trials in rural and urban sites across Kenya and Nigeria in the first instance, enrolling 600 at-risk adults (≥ 50 years). The program adopts participatory research methods to develop culturally appropriate interventions and build infrastructure to evaluate dementia biomarkers from ante and post mortem samples. A cost-effectiveness analysis will be conducted to guide the strategic implementation of Africa-FINGERS into regional health systems. The Africa-FINGERS strategy aligns with the Worldwide-FINGERS framework and integrates the global Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative approach, emphasizing multimodal analysis.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Authors/Creators: |
|
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2024 The Author(s). Alzheimer's & Dementia published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Alzheimer's Association. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
Keywords: | Alzheimer's disease; brain banking; community-based participatory research; dementia prevention trials; fluid and neuroimaging biomarkers; health economics; implementation science; retinal imaging |
Dates: |
|
Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health (Sheffield) > School of Medicine and Population Health |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 12 Nov 2024 11:12 |
Last Modified: | 12 Mar 2025 16:41 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1002/alz.14344 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:219510 |