Currently, there are no disease-modifying treatments for Alzheimer's disease (AD) or any other dementia subtype. The renaissance in psychedelic research in recent years, in particular studies involving psilocybin and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), coupled with anecdotal reports of cognitive benefits from micro-dosing, suggests that they may have a therapeutic role in a range of psychiatric and neurological conditions due to their potential to stimulate neurogenesis, provoke neuroplastic changes and reduce neuroinflammation. This inevitably makes them interesting candidates for therapeutics in dementia. This mini-review will look at the basic science and current clinical evidence for the role of psychedelics in treating dementia, especially early AD, with a particular focus on microdosing of the classical psychedelics LSD and psilocybin.

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With memory services generally set up to cope with the demands of an older age group, meeting the needs of younger patients with dementia has its difficulties and there is a possibility of service saturation. Dr Richards and colleagues describe their audit of a memory assessment service in Cornwall, which highlights the urgent need for more thorough screening assessment in primary care of younger patients before they reach the memory clinic.

Under the Quality Outcome Framework (QOF), points are awarded to GP practices that keep a dementia register and record patient reviews. The aim of this audit was to compare the East Cornwall Memory Service's database of diagnosed patients against the QOF registers for dementia held by nine GP practices in East Cornwall.