About the Trust

The CADASIL Research and Support Trust was created by Mr Jack Shields, a CADASIL Sufferer, who was diagnosed in 2001.

Jack, who retired due to ill health in 1988, was a successful business man. He, together with a team of engineers and scientists, built a very successful international organisation for design manufacturing and sales into the world market. In 1983 his company received the Queen’s Award for Export Achievement. More recently he made several very significant advances in the design of computerised optical instrumentation for the accurate analysis of protein compounds.

By conducting a search on the internet he found many references to papers in the literature on research that is currently being carried out on CADASIL but unfortunately much of it is repetitious and most of very little direct value to the sufferer.
As an example, it is an established fact that after as long as three years of knowledge of the existence of the disease, medical progress is such that the only recognised prescribed medication is 75mg of aspirin administered daily

The lack of awareness of CADASIL world wide was of great concern to Jack, and he decided to change this. CADASIL is more common than familial Altzhiemers, yet receives none of the recognition of this fact, both in research funding and awareness.

To undertake setting up a charity, with all the stresses that are involved, Jack had to keep himself alive, and began self experimenting for a treatment.

He is not a trained medical practitioner but can claim that by personal knowledge of his ailment and by the application of pure common sense he believes that he has found a natural amino-acid (protein) treatment for migraine-with-aura that has worked successfully now for a period of two years.
He confidently believes that migraine and stroke run concurrently, which is evidenced by the fact that he has not experienced any strokes during the same interval (see Jack's Treatment for further information)

Jack, through the Charity, is now working on building relationships with experts to encourage and support research into finding a cure for CADASIL, and chose the Trustees and Patron of the Charity with this in mind (see Trustees).