Alzheimer’s Disease

Our memories are one of the most valuable possessions we as people can hold. Unfortunately there is a disease that can destroy not only those memories but mental ability to function in our everyday life. That disease is Alzheimer's disease. Alzheimer's disease is a progressive degenerative disease of the brain.

The disease was named after the German neuroscientist who first diagnosed the disease Alois Alzheimer in 1905. This disease further effects the mind as a person ages but no evidence actually exists to say that the actual again process is connected to the rate of the progression. After a patient is diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease the life expectancy is 10-15 years. With advancements in medication and treatment the life expectancy has increased over the years but there is no cure. Perhaps even more alarming than there being no cure there is also no concrete evidence which points to what actually causes the disease. There is however evidence of the number of people being diagnosed increasing amongst older communities. It is still unclear if this is an overall rise or simply better tools to diagnose as mentioned by Journal Of American Medicine (JAMA).

There are no clear answers as to why the disease begins in specific people, but recent advances have led to new theories and clues in regards to the disease’s development. When looking at a effected person’s brain neurologist will focus on two parts that contain irregularities. One is the cortex of the frontal and cerebral lobes. The second is the hippocampus. These two sections are where we find the irregularities within a patients brain suffering from Alzheimer's disease. The three main differences in a patients brain are neurofibrillary tangles, neuritic plaques and granulovacuolar degeneration. Neurofibrillary tangle occurs when dendrites are missing in the nerve cell. Alzheimer's disease patients have many missing in their nerve cells and when this happens they become filled with protein filaments....