Jackie Stewart's fight to cure frontotemporal dementia

Stewart's foundation, Race Against Dementia, was founded in 2016, two years after his wife of over sixty years was diagnosed. The foundation is now funding a clinical trial of a blood test developed by the University of Cambridge. This test aims to detect the earliest signs of frontotemporal dementia, years or even decades before the disease actually develops. The research is led by Dr. Maura Malpetti and focuses on the type of dementia that is not genetic, and is the hardest to predict.

Lady Helen was diagnosed in 2014 after a car accident that left her vehicle on its roof. Today, she lives in a house in Switzerland financed by her husband, with no stairs or obstacles, and nurses and neurologists at her side. The Scot, a three-time world champion in Formula 1, is well aware of the privileges his sporting titles have brought him, and he wants to highlight the difficulties faced by many patients around the world.

“I visit dementia homes and come out in tears because people are completely lost.”, Stewart told the BBC. On average, one in three people develops some form of dementia in their lifetime. The former driver and team owner also said that friends and one of his previous secretaries had also been diagnosed with the condition. In his testimony, Jackie Stewart notably mentioned the moment his wife failed to recognize him for the first time.

“The other day at dinnertime, she gets up, I'm sitting next to her and she asks me, 'Where's Jackie?' It's the first time that's happened to me and it happened a few weeks ago. A bad feeling came over me. Her mind is in another world. I know Helen doesn't mean it when she suddenly starts hitting me or the nurses. She can hit someone quite often, she uses language she's never said in her life and it's like this [snaps his fingers] and I say, 'Darling, darling, don't say that.' She says, 'Why?' and then she tells me off. It usually happens after 17 p.m., he adds. Patients with dementia accumulate greater mental fatigue throughout the day, which explains these progressive behaviors.

Sir Jackie Stewart, 85, does not despair of living to the day when a cure is found. "I want this just as much as I wanted to win my world championship titles. It's extraordinarily important." The goal of the trials funded by Race Against Dementia is to discover markers of dementia in the blood, up to twenty years before symptoms develop. This may make it possible, through drug treatment, to delay or even reverse the future onset of the disease's symptoms. The initial trials will involve 1 patients, and Dr. Malpetti hopes to expand this research to 000 individuals.

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