Alzheimer's Disease

What Is Alzheimer's Disease? What Causes Alzheimer's Disease?

Alzheimer's disease is a progressive neurologic disease of the brain leading to the irreversible loss of neurons and the loss of intellectual abilities, including memory and reasoning, which become severe enough to impede social or occupational functioning. Alzheimer's disease is also known as simply Alzheimer's, and Senile Dementia of the Alzheimer Type (SDAT) .

During the course of the disease plaques and tangles develop within the structure of the brain. This causes brain cells to die. Patients with Alzheimer's also have a deficiency in the levels of some vital brain chemicals which are involved with the transmission of messages in the brain - neurotransmitters.

Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia. The disease gets worse as it develops - it is a progressive disease. There is no current cure for Alzheimer's, although there are ways of slowing down its advance and helping patients with some of the symptoms. Alzheimer's is also a terminal disease - it is incurable and causes death.

According the National Institute on Aging, there are estimated to be between 2.4 million and 4.5 million Americans who have Alzheimer's. There are approximately 417,000 people in the UK with Alzheimer's, according to the Alzheimer's Society.

Why the name Alzheimer's disease? Aloysius Alzheimer and Emil Kraepelin, Germany

Aloysius Alzheimer was a German neuropathologist and psychiatrist. He is credited with identifying the first published case of "presenile dementia" in 1906, which Kraepelin later identified as Alzheimer's disease - naming it after his colleague.

In 1901, while he worked at the city mental asylum in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Dr. Alzheimer had a 51 year old patient called Mrs. Auguste Deter. The patient had distinct behavioral symptoms which did not fit any existing diagnoses - she had rapidly failing memory, disorientation, confusion, had trouble expressing her thoughts, and was suspicious about her family members and the hospital staff. Her symptoms progressed relentlessly. Dr. Alzheimer wrote that she once said to him "I have lost myself."

Over the coming years Auguste Deter would take up more and more of Dr. Alzheimer's time, to the point of almost becoming an obsession for him. The lady died in 1906 and Dr. Alzheimer, who was working at Kraepelin's lab in Munich, had her patient records and brain sent there.

Along with two Italian doctors, Dr. Alzheimer performed an autopsy. The autopsy revealed that her brain had shrunken dramatically, but there was no evidence of atherosclerosis (thickening and hardening of the walls of the arteries). He used a silver staining technique he had learnt from ex-colleague Franz Nissl which identified amyloid plaques and neurofribrillary tangles in the brain - two hallmarks of the disease. Lean more