The early symptoms of this disease is inability to acquire new memories,difficulty in recalling recent updates.When this disease is suspected, the diagnosis is confirmed with behavioural assessments and cognitive tests often followed by a brain scan. As the disease advances, in its mature stage symptoms include confusion, irritability, aggression and long term memory loss.The mean life expectancy of this disease include seven years.Fewer individuals live upto fourteen years after diagnosis.
An ongoing research study indicates that the cause and progress of this disease is entanglement of nerves in the brain and thus the nerves get bundled up and forms a mass of pile.Yet there are no such treatment which can delay and stop the progression of this disease.
Although it is irrelevant and do not have a serious link with reduced degeneration but it is still recommended that mental stimulation,exercise and a balanced diet are a way ahead to prevent and sensibly manage the disease to some extent.
The course of this disease is broadly classified into four stages- predementia, early dementia, moderate dementia and advanced dementia alongwith progressive patterns of cognitive and functional impairments.In predementia apathy and impairment in abstract thinking is mostly observed.While in early dementia there is difficulty in language and perception.Behavioural and neuropsychiatric changes are prevalent in moderate dementia.
Amongst all the four, the most critical one is the final stage,i.e advanced dementia where people becomes almost bedridden, they cant even perform the simplest task without assistance like eating.Moreover language is reduced to words and eventually leads to complete speech loss.They can only communicate by returning emotional signals.
The root cause of this disease is reduced synthesis of neurotransmitter acetylcholine. Other cholinergic factors are initiation of large scale aggregation of amyloid which leads to neuroinflammation.
A 2004 study revealed the fact that inside nerve cell bodies there are formation of neurofabrillary tangles which causes the microtubules to disintegrate and thus collapsing the neuron’s transport system.This may result in malfunction of biochemical communication between neurons and later can cause death of cells.
A recent study suggested that the cause of this disease lies on the underlying mechanism of age related myelin breakdown in the brain.Demyelination leads to axonal transport disruption leading to loss of neurone that become stale.
Alzheimers disease is clinically diagnosed from patient history and presence of characteristic neurological and neuropsychological features .Advanced medical imaging with computed tomography(CT) or magnetic resonance imaging(MRI) and single positron emission computed tomography(SPECT).The diagnosis can be confirmed by high accuracy post mortem when brain material is available and can be examined histologically.
Although there is no definitive measure to eradicate the disease but Cardiovascular risk factors such as hypercholestremia, hypertension,smoking are associated with higher risk of onset of this disease.Moreover, long term usage of non steroidal anti inflammatory drug is also associated with this disease. There is no cure of this dreaded disease, available treatment offer small symptomatic benefit but do not give long term effect and remain palliative in nature.
