Alzheimer’s Disease
What is Alzheimer’s disease?
Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia in the elderly. It is estimated that about twenty million people worldwide are infected. When we speak of dementia, we refer to a condition that seriously affects a person’s ability to perform daily tasks.
Alzheimer’s disease is a neurodegenerative condition that progressively affects memory and other intellectual and finally robs its victims the ability to carry out even the most basic tasks.
The name of this disease is caused by a German psychiatrist named Alois Alzheimer, who worked together with another German psychiatrist named Emil Kraepelin. In 1906 Alzheimer first described the neuropathological hallmarks of the disease changes. For this study the brains of 51 women who had recently died in hospital in Frankfurt and had a clinical presentation in which, among other symptoms included delusions of jealousy, memory loss and hallucinations. Kraepelin had already identified the symptoms, but decided that the disease was to carry the name of Alzheimer consider providing it to the understanding of this disease is extremely important.
For much of the twentieth century the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease is limited to people between the ages of 45-65 years showed the characteristic symptoms as in older age people loss of mental faculties was more or less normal. However, in the 1970s and 1980s this began to change. Currently the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease applies to any person presenting symptoms and course of this condition.