What is Alzheimer's Disease

Through Alzheimer's Disease healthy neurons are destroyed in the brain. This is caused by so-called neuritic plaques (or senile plaques) and neurofibrillary tangles in the brain. These can be found in the brain tissue in autopsy. Neuritic plaques consist of worsening neuronal material surrounding deposits of a sticky protein called beta-amyloid.

These abnormalities particles tend to settle in the memory (the brain areas that control the ability to learn a new fact and remember it 30 minutes, or a day later).

This disease can't be stopped and there is no treatment available or natural way to any kind of reversing of the process. In fact it progresses in time.

How Does Someone Get Alzheimer's Disease?

Heredity

There are known cases of heredity. These concern about 5 percent of all Alzheimer's suffering people. Most of these cases are characterized by at least half of the family members developing Alzheimer's at a certain age. Providentially this occurs in very few number of families.

Sporadic

All of the other Alzheimer's disease cases are sporadic. All kinds studies have been conducted to the causes of the disease. Until now there is no relation found to specific eating habits, professional groups, or personality types that should be responsible for the development of Alzheimer's disease.

Risk Factors

If you follow the newspapers, actuality on TV or through the Internet, you'll have seen messages about the newest "risk factors" that have been identified.

More About Risk Factors

We'll give you some examples we collected in spring 2011:

Metabolic Syndrome Increases Risk of Memory Loss Risk in Elderly(February 3, 2011):

Research has proven an increasing risk for memory loss to older people with larger waistlines, high blood pressure and other risk factors that make up metabolic syndrome (having three or more of the following risk factors: high blood pressure, excess belly fat, higher than normal triglycerides - a type of fat found in the blood -, high blood sugar and low high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, or "good" cholesterol).

Everyone Can Minimize His or Her Risk of Dementia (February 21, 2011):

According to Swedish scientist Laura Fratiglionias one gets older cognitive functioning can be influenced by factors from blood pressure and weight to the degree of physical and mental activity.

Studies find possible new genetic risk factors for Alzheimer's disease (April 4, 2011):

Scientists have confirmed one gene variant and have identified several others that may be risk factors for late-onset Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of this type of dementia.

The gene variant, Apolipoprotein E-e4 (APOE-e4), has been confirmed as an important inheritance risk for the common form of late-onset Alzheimer's disease.

The last few years researchers found additional gene variants of CR1, CLU and PICALM as possible risk factors for late-onset Alzheimer's.

The latest research identified that the gene variants, BIN 1, EPHA 1, MS4A, CD2AP, and CD33 also affect development of late-onset Alzheimer's.

Differences In Brain Anatomy Predict Alzheimer's Disease Risk (April 17, 2011):

Analysis of MRI scans from two separate study groups, have led to the conclusion that, among individuals in whom specific brain structures were thinnest, the risk of developing Alzheimer's was three times higher than in those with above average thickness.

Stress may increase risk for Alzheimer's disease (May 27, 2011):

Together with colleagues at the University of Minho in Braga, Portugal, researchers form the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich have now shown that stress, and the hormones released during stress, can accelerate the development of Alzheimer disease-like biochemical and behavioral pathology. They discovered that the increased release of stress hormones in rats leads to generation of abnormally phosphorylated tau protein in the brain and ultimately, memory loss.

Reliability of These Conclusions

As you probably concluded yourself most of these possible risk factors still are not for sure. Aspects found in rats are an indication but not the prove of the same effects in humans.

We surely will learn more about the disease and the causes after years of studies in which large numbers of individuals are followed from an early age to the age at which probable Alzheimers disease develops.

It still is hard to determine the diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease. Frequently there are tidings about mis-diagnosis of the disease. A really 100% certainty can be established through a post-mortem (thus after the patient is passed away).