Dementia now costs the UK economy twice as much as cancer but gets a fraction of the funding to find causes and cures, a report seen by the BBC shows.

For every one pound spent on dementia research, 12 times that sum goes on investigating cancer, figures from the Alzheimer's Research Trust indicate.

Bridging this gap is urgent, it says, particularly given the numbers with dementia are much higher than thought.

With 821,884 sufferers, dementia costs the UK £23bn annually, the report says.

The number of sufferers is 15% higher than had been estimated, according to the Dementia 2010 Report , and the trust says it will now pass the one million mark before 2025.

The annual burden on the economy meanwhile is 35% higher than the previous calculations of £17bn.

Researchers from the University of Oxford compared the cost of caring for a person with dementia to the cost of dealing with cancer, heart disease or stroke - the three main causes of death in the UK.

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