Alzheimer's disease is found in senior citizens. With Alzheimer's, people have trouble remembering things, and it could affect many things, such as your work, social life, and things you enjoy doing. It is a progressive brain disease, and a form of dementia. Alzheimer's can be fatal. This is all because Alzheimer's destroys brain cells. It was first discovered by Alois Alzheimer, and the disease is named after him. He discovered it when a person named Frau Auguste D., who at that time was 50 years old, came to see Alois Alzheimer. Her family brought her there, and told Alois Alzheimer all the symptoms she was having. They said she had problems with her memory, and that it was hard for her to speak and understand what she was being told. She began to get worse.
Later, she was too ill to get out of bed. A few years after that, during the spring of 1906, she died. She died because she had too many infections from her bedsores and pneumonia. After she died, Alois Alzheimer had permission from her family to have an autopsy of her brain. Alois Alzheimer found that her brain had shrunken a lot, compared to the normal brain. The cortex which deals with memory, thinking, judgment and speech - was really small. In 1907, Alois Alzheimer published this encounter, and finally in 1910 Emil Kraepelin said it should be named after Alois Alzheimer. Today, Alzheimer's disease is still common, and kills many people; it is the seventh leading cause of death. Also, more than 5 million people have Alzheimer's.
Symptoms
Alzheimer's is a progressive disease, and it destroys brain cells. Since it destroys brain cells, you will have memory loss. You will also start to lose the ability to do common tasks, such as making a meal for yourself. People with Alzheimer's might have a difficult time with their language. For example, they'll forget simple words, like eat, and substitute it for hard to understand sentence. They might say I want to put stuff in my mouth. They also will have a hard time with knowing the time, and the place they're at. Another symptom they have is bad judgment. For example, you may wear nothing when it's cold outside, or the other way around. People with Alzheimer's may also have problems with hard tasks dealing with the brain. An example of this is that they may forget everything about numbers. Another symptom of Alzheimer's is when you're misplacing things. For example, you might put your watch in the freezer. People with Alzheimer's will also have changes in their mood. One minute you may be crying, one minute later, you may be happy. These mood changes happen for no apparent reason. You will have dramatic changes with your personality. An example of this is you could be confused all the time. Finally, Alzheimer's patients may lose the point of life. For example, they only want to sleep most of the time, and they don't feel like doing regular activities.
Treatment and Accommodations
Alzheimer's currently has no cure. However, there are drugs and other treatments that can help your consciousness, and your behavior symptoms. You can take Vitamin E, and studies funded by the government show it might delay your loss of ability to do regular things, and delaying going to a nursing home. You should only use it with supervision with your physician, because it could negatively interact with other medications. With Alzheimer's you can get sleep disorders. You can take sleeping drugs. You might be having sleeping disorders because you have depression, RLS (Restless leg syndrome), and sleep apnea. (Sleep apnea is when you do not have a typical breathing pattern and you will stop breathing for a short time, and that'll give you a bad night's sleep.)You can take many different drugs for these conditions, but you can also do things that don't involve drugs. For example, you can make regular times for meals, sleep time, and what time you're getting out of bed, discouraging alcohol and other drugs. There are a lot more things you can do. To treat memory symptoms of Alzheimer's you can use Cholinesterase inhibitors. Aricept is an example of this type of drug. Memantime can help with learning and memory. Memantime is another type of drug than can help all stages of Alzheimer's disease. Finally, for conditions when a person with Alzheimer's who have verbal outbursts, restlessness, etc. you should take them for a medical exam. There are many reasons why people have weird behavior. There are also drugs you can take to help stop these things.
How the Genes Are Inherited
If someone in your family has Alzheimer's, your relatives will have a higher chance of getting Alzheimer's than the regular population. If you have a parent or sibling that has Alzheimer's you are 3.5 times more likely to get Alzheimer's. If you have another relative that has Alzheimer's your chances of getting Alzheimer's are increased. This is because some mutations happen in these 3 genes: the APP, PS1, and PS2 gene. These three genes are involved in early Alzheimer's disease. Currently, scientists don't know what genes cause the late Alzheimer's disease. The APP gene is involved in the formation of deposits of amyloid plaques in the brain. The amyloid plaques are composed of beta-amyloid, a protein. The beta-amyloid is a fragment of the APP gene. The mutated APP gene is estimated to be responsible for 5 to 20 percent of the early stages of Alzheimer's disease. People with the mutation in the APP gene develop Alzheimer's around age 50. The PS1 gene causes 50 percent of early stages of Alzheimer's disease. They don't know what role the PS1 gene plays in the body. An interesting thing with the PS1 gen, is that families that have a particular mutated PS1 gene will develop Alzheimer's around the same age, have weaker legs, and have lots of changes in their brain, compared to the average person with Alzheimer's disease. Finally, the PS2 gene does very similar things as the PS1 genes, and just like the PS1 gene, scientists don't know the role it plays in the human body. People who had the PS2 gene don't get Alzheimer's disease. However, people with the PS2 mutation gene get a milder version of Alzheimer's than people with the PS1 mutated gene. The age when people get Alzheimer's varies with the PS2 mutation gene. This may be because some environmental factors might change the age at which a person with a PS2 mutated gene will get the disease.
