Friday, February 7, 2014

Alzheimer's - what IS it?

This is the 2nd in our set of posts about Alzheimer's disease (AD).

The short version is this: the neurons and synapses die off and areas of the brain atrophy...those areas of the brain, effectively, wither and die. No one actually knows what causes AD but, it appears significant that, the areas effected are full of amyloid plaques and and neurofibrillary tangles.

 Amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles are both, more or less, small hardened bits malformed proteins.  It's unknown whether they actually cause the death of the neurons and synapses or whether there's something else that causes the neurons to die off and the plaques and tangles are a by-product of that unknown agent.




One way or another, where there was once vital brain tissue, full of neurons and synapses, in AD victims, areas of the brain begin to atrophy and fill with bad stuff.

AD, as far as is known, is irreversible.  The atrophied areas grow and grow, starting with memory and cognition and advancing until the brain actually loses the ability to manage the body.  In my mother's last hours, her brain could no longer control her body temperature...it swung wildly from the mid-90s to 105/106 and back...sometimes within the same hour.

Lastly, when we discuss AD, we're almost always talking about late-onset AD (as opposed to familial or early-onset), simply because it's, by far, the most common kind.  Now, though, there seems to be an agreement in the field that late-onset AD isn't, actually, late at all.  

It's believed that the disease is usually ongoing 20-30 years before diagnosis.  The symptoms simply don't start to show up until much, much later.  As such, finding a biomarker, as discussed last week, becomes of critical importance.  Addressing the disease 20 years before symptoms start could have a dramatic impact on the quality of the victim's lives.


Next week we'll look at the current thinking about how to slow the progress of the disease.

Be well, my friends.  And please: spare a thought or a prayer for the caregivers.



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