Andre Yarham, 24, died less than two years after being diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia. His family has donated his brain to science, saying he would have wanted to help others. Doctors believe his young age is likely why his disease progressed so quickly.
The family of a 24-year-old man who died of dementia have donated his brain to science, hoping it leads to treatment that can “prolong someone’s life and give them a few more years with a loved one.”
Andre Yarham, reportedly one of the youngest people in the U.K. to be diagnosed with dementia, first showed signs of the progressive disease in 2022, when he began forgetting things and getting lost. “He would say he was going to the shop which is walking distance, and an hour later he would be in the city with no idea how to get home,” his mother, Samantha Fairbairn, told Newsweek. “I knew something wasn’t quite right.”
In June 2024, Yarham, who lived in the town of Dereham, was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia. As Fairbairn told the outlet, “The consultant said, ‘If I hadn’t known Andre’s age, I would have thought I was looking at the brain scan of a 70-year-old dementia patient.'”
Frontotemporal dementia is a term for a group of brain disorders that threaten the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain, per the Mayo Clinic. These lobes atrophy, and the shrinking of these areas can cause speech issues, emotional problems and changes in personality.
Yarham’s disease progressed quickly, his mother told the outlet, explaining that doctors “believed his young age was the reason he deteriorated so quickly – they were shocked at how rapidly things progressed.”
Fairbairn left her job as a bus driver to care for her son full-time until last fall, when Yarham needed to go into a full-time care facility. “He needed personal care including being fed, which the family did until it became too physically challenging,” she told BBC.
From there, Yarham’s condition spiraled: “He walked into his care home September last year, very slowly, but he walked in and within just over a month he was in a wheelchair,” Fairbairn told the outlet. On December 27, Yarham died after struggling with a severe infection.
Although by the end, Yarham had lost the ability to speak, Fairbairn explained that the family was confident that he would have agreed to donate his brain to dementia research at Addenbrooke’s Hospital at Cambridge University.
“The disease had taken his voice and his mind quite early on,” she told hosts Ben Shephard and Cat Deeley during a January 14 appearance alongside her husband and Andre’s stepfather, Alastair Fairbairn, on the ITV show This Morning, per Daily Mail. “But Andre being the person he was, if he could help he would have said yes.”
“What we’re hoping is even if it’s not a cure but that it leads to some sort of treatment that can prolong someone’s life and give them a few more years with a loved one that would be just amazing,” she said.
Professor James Rowe, Addenbrooke’s hospital consultant and lead for the Cambridge center for frontotemporal dementia, told Newsweek he was “incredibly grateful” for the donation. “During his lifetime, and now through brain donation, Andre continues to help us better understand this illness, detect it earlier, and search for a cure.”
“I want to pay tribute to him and his family for this amazing legacy and their campaign to raise awareness of frontotemporal dementia and the importance of research,” Rowe told the outlet. “Frontotemporal dementia is the most common form of dementia in young people.”
