{"id":7255,"date":"2019-05-22T15:54:53","date_gmt":"2019-05-22T15:54:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/alzheimer-s_disease\/"},"modified":"2019-05-22T15:54:53","modified_gmt":"2019-05-22T15:54:53","slug":"alzheimer-s_disease","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/alzheimer-s_disease\/","title":{"rendered":"Alzheimer&#8217;s disease"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The leading cause of dementia in elderly people, it is a progressive,&nbsp;irreversible, and thus incurable, neurological disease characterised by premature senile dementia that affects brain functions, including short-term memory loss, inability to reason, as well as the deterioration of language and the ability to care for oneself. &nbsp;There is an irreversible loss of neurons in particular brain areas such as the hippocampus and the polymodal association areas. &nbsp;Also, there is degeneration of the middle and smaller cerebral blood vessels at a cellular level. &nbsp;By the end of the disease, most, if not all the cortical brain areas, as well as many sub-cortical nuclei, have two different types of lesions: amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles. &nbsp;It is similar to senile dementia, with the exception that it usually starts in the 40s or 50s. &nbsp;An estimated 3% of people between the ages of 65 and 74 have Alzheimer&#8217;s, rising to about half those aged 85 and over. Worldwide, it estimated that the disease affects 15 million people. &nbsp;It was first described by the neurologist <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ibro.info\/media\/pdf\/si-his-pdf-pdf9.pdf\" class=\"cc-route-enabled\" data-editable-link=\"http:\/\/www.ibro.info\/media\/pdf\/si-his-pdf-pdf9.pdf&amp;target=_self\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Alois Alzheimer<\/a> (1864-1915) in 1906, and he published his observations the next year in his monumental tome <span class=\"\" style=\"font-style: italic;\">Alzheimer&#8217;s disease<\/span>. &nbsp;Associating Alzheimer&#8217;s name with the disease was due to the anti-Freudian psychiatrist <a href=\"http:\/\/www.psych.ndsu.nodak.edu\/nawrot\/Courses\/465Projects05\/schizophrenia\/History.htm\" class=\"cc-route-enabled\" data-editable-link=\"http:\/\/www.psych.ndsu.nodak.edu\/nawrot\/Courses\/465Projects05\/schizophrenia\/History.htm&amp;target=_self\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Emil Kraeplin<\/a> (1856-1926), who was responsible for the term &#8216;dementia praecox&#8217;&nbsp;[or what was later changed to schizophrenia by <a href=\"http:\/\/ajp.psychiatryonline.org\/article.aspx?articleID=100311\" class=\"cc-route-enabled\" data-editable-link=\"http:\/\/ajp.psychiatryonline.org\/article.aspx?articleID=100311?target=_self\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Eugen Bleuler<\/a> (1857-1940)] and its distinction from manic depression].<\/p>\n<p>bend-but-don\u2019t-break philosophy of proto- col adherenceSee Cell adhesion molecules (CAMs), Cholinergic neurotransmitter system, Down&#8217;s syndrome, Entorhinal cortex, Hippocampus, Human Connectome Project (HCP), Nerve Growth Factor (NGF), Prion (proteinaceous infectious particle), Protein-folding problem, Sensory memory, short-term memory (STM) and long-term memory (LTM), Surrogate endpoint<\/p>\n<p><\/body><\/html><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The leading cause of dementia in elderly people, it is a progressive,&nbsp;irreversible, and thus incurable, neurological disease characterised by premature senile dementia that affects brain functions, including short-term memory loss, inability to reason, as well as the deterioration of language and the ability to care for oneself. &nbsp;There is an irreversible loss of neurons in &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/alzheimer-s_disease\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Alzheimer&#8217;s disease&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2],"class_list":["post-7255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-glossary","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7255\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}