Alzheimer's Disease

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Alzheimer's disease is the most common type of dementia (ASC, n.d.). It is a disease that starts with memory loss and can progress to cognitive difficulties, personality changes, and eventually death.

Symptoms of Alzheimer's include:

(NIH, n.d.)

memory loss severe enough to disrupt work, home, or play
poor judgment
loss of spontaneity
forgetting the date
forgetting one's current location
repeating questions
wandering or getting lost
losing things
mood and personality changes
trouble with money
trouble completing daily tasks
increased anxiety

Facts About Alzheimer's

(NIH, n.d.)

the lifetime prevalence rate of Alzheimer's disease is 21% of women and 12% of men over 65 years.
death often occurs between 8 and 15years
there are two types of Alzheimer's: late onset, which typically appears in mid-60s or later, and early onset which can begin as early as someone's 30ts
Alzheimer's occurs in stages: preclinical, mold, moderate, and severe
amyloid plaques occur in the preclinical stages (before memory and cognition issues appear)

Important Vocab (ASG, n.d.; Openstax, n.d.; Gau, et. al., 2022)

GERD -Gastroesophageal reflux disease

dementia -a decline in cognitive abilities including memory loss, problem solving difficulties, and personality changes.

amyloid plaques -protein buildup on brain neurons that is associated with dementia

lifetime prevalence rate -the percentage of people in their lifetime which will get the disease

This Video Shows Some Facts About Alzheimer's disease

https://youtu.be/w6EqyEjuq3A

Diagnosing Alzheimer's

There is no official tests of Alzheimer's (ASC, n.d.). Instead, other diseases with similar symptoms are excluded. Symptoms often appears years before brain scans shows the tissue lost due to Alzheimer's disease.

Alzheimer's and the Brain

The first part of the brain to be affected by Alzheimer's is the hippocampus, which is the part of the brain associated with moving information from the short-term memory to long-term memory (ASC, n.d.).

Treating Alzheimer's Disease

The current drugs for Alzheimer's disease focus on treating the symptoms (National Institute on Aging, n.d.). There is no way of stopping the disease or curing it.

Those Drugs include:

Cholinesterase inhibitors -drugs that boost the neurotransmitter ACH

Namenda -drugs the block the excitatory neurotransmitter Glutamate

Namzaric -a drug that contains cholinesterase inhibitors and Namenda

The parts of the brain affected by dementia

Study Finds that people with GERD (a stomach disease) are at higher risk for Alzheimer's

Gau and his colleagues (2022) analyzed the data from the 2000-2012 longitudinal health insurance database of Taiwan to see if there was a correlation between GERD and dementia. 16,431 GERD patients were compared with 257,140 control patients (all above the age of 40years). Patients with GERD were more slightly more likely to develop dementia. People with hypertension, obesity, alcoholism, heart failure, stroke, and depression were also more likely to develop dementia. The use of treatments for GERD, such as PPIs (protein pump inhibitors) was associated with a decrease in dementia. This study suggests that people with GERD should get it treated to lower their risk of Alzheimer's.

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