Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a cognitive deficit of increasing incidence most common among people from the age of 65 onward; the older the patient, the worst the cognitive functioning is. In this literature review we will see more details about the characteristics of these disease (causes, diagnosis techniques, etc.). We know that Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) does not always mean that AD will develop later on, but it can be used as a way of predicting, or at least trying to predict, if AD will eventually appear. There are neuroimaging techniques that can help in our task to diagnose AD and describe its causes.
By learning what AD is and how to diagnose it, the expectation is to learn about Early Onset Alzheimer’s disease (EOAD). There is
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Meet the criteria for probable AD
2. Histopathological evidence obtained by necropsy and biopsy.
To give a definitive diagnosis we use an anatopathologic study of the patient’s brain.
When talking about neuroimaging, its role in the diagnosis and treatment of AD and other degenerative dementias is still fundamentally reduced to discarding other slowly progressive brain injuries that could cause dementia, like tumours in the frontal or temporal lobe or vascular accumulative lesions. However, a new and more positive panorama is foreseen for neuroimaging and the management of this disease and related disorders.
The current approach of the AD’s therapy is centred in seeking the patient’s improvement with modulators of the NMDA glutamate receptors or acetylcholinesterase inhibitors; also it is centred in the search for remedies to prevent the development of clinical disease in people who may be prone to it.
For this second objective the presymptomatic diagnosis would be critical.
Structural neuroimaging is also useful for predicting which of the people with MCI characteristic memory deficits have the possibility of evolving towards a
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Functional neuroimaging has two big brunches:
• Study of changes in metabolism or cerebral perfusion or blood oxygenation associated to the disease, with or without brain activation activities.
• Study of chemical compounds that can be altered in preclinical phases or