Health
Problems
Alzheimer's Disease
What is
Alzheimer's disease?
Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of senile
dementia. In Britain alone, over two million people suffer from this
disease which to date remains incurable. Scientists estimate that by the
year 2025, over 50 million people worldwide will be suffering from
Alzheimer's disease.
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Symptoms
Symptoms include depression, irritability, general mental and physical
degeneration and complete loss of memory.
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Known
Cause
Despite extensive international
research the causes of Alzheimer's disease remain unknown. Research
continues and the picture is constantly changing as new findings emerge.
In many studies, the results are only tentative.
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Diagnosis
Accurate diagnosis
of Alzheimer's disease is difficult as there is no single simple test
available. However, criteria have been developed which can assist the
process, and predictive genetic tests may be available for a minority of
patients. New brain scanning procedures have also been developed which can
give accurate measurements of brain shrinkage.
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Conventional
treatments
A wide range of ways to treat the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease with
drugs being developed. These drugs are known as acetylcholinesterase
inhibitors. They prevent the breakdown of the cholinergic
neurotransmitter, acetylcholine, a shortage of which appears to contribute
to memory loss and other cognitive problems. They achieve this by stopping
or interfering with the breakdown of the acetylcholinesterase enzyme.
Three such drugs are currently marketed - donepezil (Aricept),
rivastigmine (Exelon) and THA (Tacrine) an older drug reported to cause
liver toxicity which is not available in the UK.
However, many other strategies, involving neurotransmitters, neuropeptides
and nerve growth factors, for example, may prove more effective in the
future. The availability of an effective animal model of Alzheimer's
disease has hindered treatment research in the past but this now seems to
have been resolved with the development of various transgenic mouse models
which are constantly being improved.
Source: - Alzheimer’s
Disease Society
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This page was last updated on 04 December 2006 18:44:59
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