Baroness Susan Greenfield is heading up an elite research group which is looking into ways of managing these conditions prior to symptoms appearing.

Speaking at the University’s Luton campus, Baroness Greenfield believed regular blood tests and the daily consumption of specified tablets would prevent conditions from developing further.

“The dream would be to facilitate a routine blood test every few months at GP practices; a blood test which could specifically detect these, and similar, conditions before the symptoms arrive,” said Baroness Greenfield, a Senior Research Fellow at Lincoln College, Oxford University

“Detecting the diseases early would allow for daily treatments such as oral medication or nasal spray to stop any more cells dying.

“This would be great, even for people who already have these conditions, because sufferers’ conditions wouldn’t get any worse.

“It’s not a cure as such but it’s a management of the condition.

“Taking medication, alongside routine blood tests, would be a very small price to pay compared to the ravages of dementia. It would also be a very small price in terms of the NHS”

Highlighting a number of current approaches battling neurodegeneration (a term for the progressive loss of structure or function of neurons – diseases include Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s), Baroness Greenfield cited the need to explore a potential link between Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Motor Neurons disease, and to uncover the “basic mechanism” of these diseases in order for blood tests to pick up on them.

A Life Peer at the House of Lords, Baroness Greenfield added that scientists need to find the area of the brain which is affected by these conditions so that we can then target it with drugs and stop the progression of the diseases.

“Nature appears to have given us various clues.

“If you look at the neurons that degenerate primarily in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, they are actually adjacent to each other, as indeed are Motor Neurons.

“All three of those might have something in common because they appear to originate in the same part of the brain.”

Baroness Greenfield’s lecture formed part of the University’s series of public guest lectures. The Baroness was invited by Dr Pinar Uysal-Onganer and Professor Jan Domin on behalf of the Department of Life Sciences. Dr Uysal-Onganer had previously collaborated with Baroness Greenfield and now leads an independent research group focusing on Cancer Biology.