ALZHEIMERS

Alzheimer's

Alzheimer's

History

Alzheimer's disease was named after a German neurologist Alois Alzheimer. Dr. Alzheimer had a fifty-one year old patient Auguste D. Her family brought her to see him in 1901 when she had developed some memory problems. She was also having difficulty speaking and understanding things that were spoken to her. Her symptoms continued to deteriorate and she was bedridden within a few years. She died in the spring of 1906. After performing an autopsy, Dr. Alzheimer saw that there was dramatic shrinkage in the cortex of the brain. This is the area that involves memory, thinking, judgement and speech. While researching under the microscope, he saw fatty deposits in some of the small blood vessels, dead and dying brain cells and abnormal deposits in and around certain brain cells. Dr. Alzheimer referred to this case as a special case of “pre- senile dementia”. He thought of this case as a form of dementia in a patient that was not elderly. A few years later in 1910, Dr. Emil Kraepelin a psychiatrist known for his work with brain disorders proposed that this disease be known as Alzheimer's disease.

Diagnosis

A diagnosis of Alzheimer's is said to be a “diagnosis by exclusion”. This means that there is no certain test just for Alzheimer's, but many tests that rule out other diseases. The early stages deal with short-term memory loss. Examples of this include forgetting to turn off the stove, forgetting what medications were taken in a particular day, or forgetting which medications need to be taken. As the disease progresses there is more visibility in the declines in abstract thinking and intellectual function development. As the disease enters the final stages, individuals become very confused and disorientated. At this point the individual's health status has become severely deteriorated and this can cause them to develop pneumonia or other illnesses that may lead to death. Consequently, most people do not die from Alzheimer's, but other health related problems. Alzheimer's disease can last anywhere from six to eight years, however it can be present without obvious symptoms for two to twenty years. The on-set of Alzheimer's disease is very slow.

Causes for Alzheimer's

There are many factors that play a role in the cause of Alzheimer's disease. This disease is also genetic—a person that has family members with the disease possesses an increased chance of being diagnosed with Alzheimer's also. This disease supposedly caused by many effects on the brain. A mutation of a single gene is one condition that is found in the brain of Alzheimer's patients (Bronstein & Pulst, 2003). There are also proteins in the brain that are linked to Alzheimer's. They are the amyloid precursor and two presenilins, (Bronstein & Pulst, 2003) which are responsible in the early on-set of the disease (Brzyska & Elbaum, 2003). The number one indicator of Alzheimer's is a gene called apolipoproteinE (apoE). There are three forms of this gene. ApoE 4 is the one that is most closely related to Alzheimer's ...