More of us than ever before are old, with more people in the UK now aged over 60 than under 16 – 11 million – making up almost 20 per cent of the population.

Of those AMRC charities which focus on this area, it is perhaps unsurprising that the work of two is focused on Alzheimer’s disease and other less common forms of dementia. These progressive conditions, while they can affect the young, are principally perils of ageing, currently afflicting between 700,000 and 800,000 people in the UK and estimated to rise to over a million by 2025. A third of those over 95 are already affected.

Two-thirds of people with dementia are women, and the condition directly causes 60,000 deaths a year. Simply finding ways to delay its onset by five years would cut this toll by half. The impact of this on alleviating human suffering, not to mention the financial cost of dementia to the UK, which currently stands at over £17 billion a year, would be huge.

It is important to note that the major and growing issue of ageing is reflected in work funded by many AMRC member charities into diseases which have a particular burden on older people, from heart disease and cancer to disorders of joint, bone and muscle.