Alzheimers Disease :: Alzheimers Disease Essays

Alzheimers DiseaseIntroduction to AlzheimersAlzheimers disease is a progressive degenerative disease of the forefront.It is first described by the German neuropathologist Alois Alzheimer (1864-1915)in 1905. This disease worsens with advancing age, although there is no evidencethat it is bother out by the aging process.The average life expectancy of a individual with the disease is between fiveand ten dollar bill years, but some patients right away can live up to 15 years due toimprovements in c atomic number 18 and medical treatments. The cause of Alzheimers has notbeen discovered yet and it cannot be possible to confirm a person hasAlzheimers until their autopsy following death.How does Alzheimers pay backWhat causes Alzheimers? Well no one know exactly the development ofthis weaken disease. But recent advances has produced several clues as tohow it is born. Initially when we study the judgment of a Alzheimers victim, wefocus on cardinal specific areas. One is the cerebr al mantle of the window dressing and cerebrallobes1. The second is the hippocampus (meaning seahorses in Greek which itresembles2) which is determined below the cerebral cortex and responsible forshort-term memory. If we study samples of these two section, we would find threeirregularities which are not found in public encephalon matter. These three arecalled neurofibrillary tangles, neuritic plagues and granulovacuolardegeneration3.A nerve cell has many axons and dendrites coming out of it. Aneurofibrillary tangle is when the neuron changes. A fare of dendrites aremissing and the marrow is filled with protein filaments resembling steel wool.Although all patriarchal people has a few of these helix shape bundles intheir brain for they are normal indicators of aging, Alzheimers patients hasmore than usual. Their presence usually in the frontal and temporal lobes is aindication of AD.Senile neuritic plagues are small play objects. They are masses ofamyloid protein material co mposed of residue remaining over from healthy nerveendings that were broken off and decayed. Their presence beside the cell furtherindicates something gone wrong. Neuritic plaques is the best evidence fordiagnostics to make the determination of AD.A third sign of neuron deterioration is granulovacuolar degeneration.This is when fluid-filled vacuoles are seen crowding inside the nerve cell,specifically in the triangular shaped cells of the hippocampus. This conditioncan only be observed in carefully sliced, stain and analyzed brain tissue.The cell having lost all its dendrites and nucleus soon disintegratesentirely, vanishing into the bodys waste disposal system. With the depletion ofenough nerve material the brain actually shrinks, sometimes by as much as tenpercent5. The more cells the AD sufferer loses, the more mental functions he