Alzheimer’s disease is a neurodegenerative disease that affects memory, recognition, coordination, speech, and self-care. It is most common in people aged 65-85 and is caused by genetics and risk factors. There is no cure, and current research focuses on stem cells and bacteria to dissolve amyloid plaque.
Alzheimer’s is a neurodegenerative disease that, over the course of seven to ten years, renders its sufferers unable to remember much about their lives, recognize loved ones, engage in coordinated movements, speak properly, or use the bathroom on their own. The disease probably doesn’t kill people directly, but it impairs their ability to care for themselves, making them much more susceptible to other ailments and consequently leading to their deaths. The disease begins with mild forgetfulness, which progressively worsens until most of the mental faculties that people usually associate with personality and intelligence are destroyed.
Alzheimer’s disease most often strikes between the ages of 65 and 85, affecting up to a third of all people who reach the latter end of this age group. The incidence among 65-year-olds is only 2-3%, but reaches 25-50% among 85-year-olds. It is found less frequently in people over the age of 85, because people predisposed to the disease are usually already dead.
Since older people suffer from various forms of senility, it was only in 1906 that Alzheimer’s was identified as an independent entity with its own symptoms and pathology. The condition is not contagious, but emerges in people later in life based on their genetics and certain risk factors, such as smoking and inadequate exercise. Although the original cause of the disease was thought to be failure to produce the essential neurotransmitter acetylcholine, modern experts tend to focus on the buildup of an extracellular plaque called beta-amyloid.
There is no cure for Alzheimer’s disease, and it is very difficult to prevent. Because the disease is so common, thousands of studies focus on it, many careers are built on it, and billions of dollars have been spent trying to stop it, but all of this activity has resulted in little real success. Some scientists hope stem cell research will lead to a real cure. Others look for bacteria that specialize in dissolving amyloid plaque but not surrounding tissue, which could be found in graveyards where they’ve adapted over thousands of generations to digest nutrients in decaying human brains. If this disease continues to prove stubborn, researchers may have to wait for medical nanotechnology so that plaque can be removed directly to target the root cause.
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