Alois Alzheimer's Disease

Alzheimer's was given its name in 1906 by a germen doctor who was the first to put a name to the disease, his name was Alois Alzheimer. Alzheimer's disease is a progressive neurodegenerative condition. It’s a disease that causes dementia, or loss of brain function like thinking and reasoning skills. It affects the parts of the brain that are important for memory and language. A person’s brain with Alzheimer's contains irregular clumps of cellular debris and protein called plaque along with collapsed microtubules. Microtubules are support structures inside the cell that are stabilized by a protein called tau. The malfunctioning of the protein tau causes the microtubules to collapse. The tau protein normally stabilizes the microtubules but in

The brain also produces smaller amounts of the neurotransmitters acetylcholine, serotonin, and norepinephrine. Theses neurotransmitters are chemicals that allow nerve cells to talk to one another. Because Alzheimer's kills brain cells, people who suffer from it slowly lose their ability to think clearly. It starts out slow with simple things like forgetting words or names, or remembering where things are. As the disorder progresses however patients will begin to forget how to do simple tasks like walking to get their mall or brushing their teeth. People who suffer from Alzheimer's are eventually unable to perform activities associated with daily living. As many as 4 million Americans have Alzheimer's disease. ("Alzheimer's

The first category is Early-onset Alzheimer’s disease which is very rare. The early-onset forms of Alzheimer's are inherited in an autosomal dominant pattern, which means that only one parent has to pass down a defective copy of the gene for their child to develop the disorder. It manifests its self in people between the ages of 30 to 60 years old and only represents less than 5 percent of all Alzheimer’s cases. Out of the five percent of early-onset Alzheimer disease cases most are caused by an inherited change in one of three genes which are amyloid precursor protein (APP), presenilin-1 (PS-1) and presenilin-2 (PS-2). ("Alzheimer's & Dementia Risk Factors | Alzheimer's Association") These cases are known as early-onset familial Alzheimer's disease, or FAD. Mutations on chromosome 21 cause the formation of abnormal amyloid precursor protein (APP), a mutation on chromosome 14 causes abnormal presenilin-1 to be made, and a mutation on chromosome 1 leads to abnormal presenilin-2. These three mutations play a role in the breakdown of APP. It is not fully understood what its exact function is, however it is known that its breakdown is part of a process that generates harmful forms of amyloid plaques which as stated above is a cornerstone in Alzheimer’s. The second category is late-onset Alzheimer’s disease. It is the most common form of Alzheimer and it doesn’t manifest its self until