31/03/2026
On our focus this week on sleep and brain health:
Alzheimer’s disease begins years before symptoms appear, long before memory changes are noticed.
New research led by the University of Bristol is now focusing on something simple, but powerful: sleep.
Improving sleep may help to delay or even prevent the progression of Alzheimer’s by supporting the brain’s natural ability to clear harmful proteins during deep sleep.
This represents a promising new pathway, supporting the brain through non-drug approaches.
This work is part of a wider UK programme of five major studies, funded by the Medical Research Council, exploring different pathways in neurodegenerative disease:
• Sleep and Alzheimer’s disease, including deep sleep and brain clearance
• Blood vessel damage in the brain, linked to around 40% of dementia cases
• Combination drug approaches for Parkinson’s disease
• Understanding how brain chemistry and blood flow contribute to disease
• Using real-world patient data to accelerate treatment development
All projects are aligned with the Dame Barbara Windsor Dementia Goals programme, which aims to speed up progress from research to real treatments, ensuring discoveries reach people and families as quickly as possible.
We are beginning to understand that small, daily factors, like sleep, may play a much bigger role in brain health than once thought.
The SleepBoost study is one of five new MRC-funded studies awarded £16.5 million to help identify new ways to treat or slow down neurodegenerative diseases before symptoms worsen.
