Alzheimer disease (AD), a neurodegenerative disorder, is the most common form of dementia, It was first described in 1906 by a psychiatrist, German and a neuropathologist Alois Alzheimer. 

 

IMAGE SOURCE: http://www.alz.org/index.asp

 

This incurable disease affects mainly people over 65 years of age and is characterized clinically by a persistent and progressive decline in cognitive ability, and most commonly in memory loss, confusion, irritability violent and changing behaviour, language problems; pathologically by neuronal loss in select brain regions, neurofibrillary tangles and senile plaques.

 

IMAGE SOURCE: http://www.alzheimer.ca/english/alzheimer_brain_mini_site/09.htm

 

About the aetiology of AD, the primary hypothesis is that accumulation of amyloid-β (Aβ) peptide, a product of amyloid precursor protein (APP) processing, is the causative constituent of AD pathogenesis. The accumulation of proteins is cause of alterations related to reactive processes and losses of neurons.

 

 

IMAGE SOURCE: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v423/n6938/fig_tab/423392a_F1.html

 

Extracellular Ab accumulation occurs in the parenchyma as diffuse, focal or stellate deposits. It may involve the vessel walls of arteries, veins and capillaries.

 

A variety of clinico-pathological kinds of Alzheimer disease have been reported, according to the type of the lesions (plaque only and tangle predominant), the type of onset (focal onset), the cause (genetic or sporadic) and the associated lesions bodies, vascular lesions, hippocampal sclerosis, inclusions and argyrophilic grain disease).

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