Priorities and Future Actions in Prevention of NDD,  Milan

On 16-17 October 2024, NeuroCentury took part in the international conference on prevention strategies for neurodegenerative disorders. The event was hosted by Prof. Giancarlo Comi and the Prada Foundation in Milan and reviewed emerging scientific evidence with respect to the main risk factors, needed to guide interventions. A risk factor is any factor related to the probability of developing the disease. Risk factors may either increase or decrease the likelihood of an adverse outcome. They need not be causally related with the outcome. In fact, a multicausal process behind the emergence of neurodegenerative disorders is reassuring because it offers an opportunity for a multitude of interventions.

NeuroCentury’s Paweł Świeboda presented a Blueprint on Prevention, consisting of the following elements:

• Stepping up research funding in areas where knowledge gaps persist. Although much spending is generic covering prevention in health at large, domain-specific research priorities are important, given the specificity of the brain and brain disorders.
• Accessibility of the reservoir of knowledge on prevention should be improved, including agreeing on the methodology for scientifitic validation of risk factors, with more trials where necessary.
• Systemic investing in prevention needs to be adopted, involving collaboration amoung public, private, and philantropic funders, and deployment of capital in a cross-cutting fashion to catalyse transformations in critical areas.
• Pursuing placed-based prevention, addressing the relevant factors where they strike and taking account of the substantial variability in risk factors: from genetic predispositions to environmental and socioeconomic factors.
• Scaling up personalised prevention, with risk stratification and a brain health tracking system based on validated and optimised tools to be used for assessment and proactive risk reduction.
• Boosting prevention-focused business models, from insurance-based ones incentivising engaging in preventive activities, onto models prioritising prevention-friendly workplace.
• Supporting “good” brain health, building on growing public interest in brain health, and readiness to change lifestyle if required.