More young people in KSA hit by brain disorders

The Kingdom lacks specialized doctors who can diagnose and manage the growing incidence of brain disorders in the country, especially among young people, a leading doctor said here.
Saeed Bohlega, professor and senior neurology consultant at the department of neurology at King Faisal Specialist Hospital in Riyadh and the president of the Saudi Neurology Society, told Arab News at the Brain Forum conference here that there appears to be an epidemic-level problem of young people contracting these illnesses.
He said this was worrying because children and young adults form 50 percent of the country’s population. This was in sharp contrast to the number of elderly people contracting old-age diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
He said there are 27 million Saudis, with only 5 percent over the age of 60, who have a 2 percent chance of contracting Alzheimer’s. The risk doubles every year after the age of 60. Those at highest risk are people aged 90, but there are few people of this age in the country, he said.
“The diseases occurring in children or young people such as multiple disorders, muscles diseases, and genetic-related problems are higher in number than Alzheimer’s and other old-age diseases,” he said.
He said these disorders have affected 70 percent of women between the ages of 20 and 30. He said the rise of mental and neurological disorders could be attributed to changes in lifestyle because of the wealth of the country.
He said there appears to be an “epidemic” of these illnesses with almost 15,000 individuals affected. He said genetic disposition causes one-third of the problems, with environmental factors responsible for the other two-thirds.
“This means that the lifestyle of the people, food intake, Vitamin D-deficiency or maybe other reasons are responsible. We don’t know exactly what the major reasons are but the prevalence of brain diseases among 20-year-olds has increased tenfold between 1986 and 2013,” he said.
He said it would be difficult to determine the reasons for this. “It’s not that easy, we have to look at early diagnosis and treatment which is very important in all the cases for better treatment. Spreading awareness is also very important. The medication is expensive but available for citizens,” he said.
Bohlega praised the efforts of Walid Juffali, founder of W-Science and a pioneering businessman in the Kingdom, who has spearheaded efforts to tackle this situation. “The Brain Forum is a global idea because it has brought experts together from all around the world, which has helped to highlight the advanced treatment and research in this area.”
He said there would be many roundtable discussions to exchange knowledge about the use of advanced technology and early diagnosis.
The Brian Forum was set up in conjunction with a scientific committee that includes Hilal A. Lashuel, associate professor of neuroscience, director of the laboratory of chemical biology of neurodegeneration, Brain Mind Institute, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne; Christopher Toumazou from Imperial College; Jamil El-Imad, managing director and chief scientist of NeuroPro, a Swiss-based medical technology research, design and commercialization company that focuses on health care solutions related to applied neural signal analysis; and Mohammed Jan, professor and consultant of pediatric neurology and clinical neurophysiology, department of pediatrics, faculty of medicine at King Abdulaziz University.