— By Rossella Rebecchi 

Bruce Miller

Every 3 seconds, someone in the world develops Dementia, a chronic, progressive syndrome caused by numerous and different brain illnesses.

By 2030, 75 million people will be affected by this syndrome worldwide and most of them will live in low- and middle-income countries. Now that our global population ages, the impact of untreated dementia is growing exponentially and yet there is still so much more to discover about this neurodegenerative disease.

To better understand the syndrome will make it possible to predict its correct neuropathology, bringing us forward in the development of targeted treatments. Bruce Miller, Chief Editor of the new specialty Dementia in Frontiers in Neurology, highlights how this syndrome can breakdown our memory, our language skills or our social cognition, destroying our social networks and our rational judgement. It is paramount to focus on how to enhance support for patients while finding objective biomarkers for both the diagnosis and the stages of the disease, developing better treatments.

Access to research on dementia

“Free, accessible research results allow for a more educated and fair community. Libraries can shift subscription costs to offset the costs for authors to get published, and the peer review service provided by leaders in the field ensures quality. The results need to reach not only other scientists and academics in the US, but also scientists in lower-income countries that may not be able to afford journal subscriptions, policy makers around the world, and others that can be helped by the results as well as add to the body of knowledge. Dementia is a complex syndrome, and it is important to take global, collaborative and openly available efforts to develop treatments,” states Bruce Miller.

Articles published in Dementia will be freely and universally available — empowering researchers, citizens and clinicians to rapidly and efficiently combine knowledge and awareness, while helping to develop innovations in therapies.

The Research Topic Silent Seizures and Memory Loss in Alzheimer’s Disease is now open for submissions.

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Frontiers journals have some of the highest citation rates. Among the world’s 20 largest publishers in 2017, Frontiers ranks 4th most-cited with an average of 3.65 citations per article.  In total, Frontiers articles have received more than 700,000 citations to date.