Word: dementias
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...very small group of patients under the age of 60. That soon changed, thanks in part to the widespread use of vaccines and antibiotics, which extended the life-span (from around 50 years in 1906 to 77 today). By the 1960s, the number of cases of so-called senile dementia had increased to the point that neurologists finally made the connection: in most cases, Alzheimer's disease and senile dementia were one and the same (see box, page...
...family that had been haunted for generations by Alzheimer's. Yet such cases, researchers were only too well aware, accounted for merely a small fraction of all cases of Alzheimer's disease. Still other genes, they reasoned, must be involved in the great majority of cases--those in which dementia does not strike until one's seventh, eighth or ninth decade of life...
...axons--long projections that carry signals from one nerve cell to another--holding them together like ties on a railroad track. When tau goes bad and clumps into tangles, the axons shrivel up and die. The case for tau further solidified in 1998, when researchers discovered a form of dementia associated with mutations of the tau gene. People with these mutations did not develop the plaques associated with Alzheimer's disease, but at death, their brains were riddled with tangles...
...every case of dementia--broadly defined as a progressive or permanent decline in intellectual function--is caused by Alzheimer's disease. In fact, there are dozens of conditions that can cause or mimic dementia, including depression, drug overdose, dehydration, anemia, syphilis, viral infections and vitamin deficiencies. Many of these are reversible if they are treated promptly, so it's important to get the proper diagnosis when you or someone you love starts experiencing serious mental deterioration...
...decline in their mental faculties if it were not for a commonly held stereotype that their mental acuity deteriorates as they grow older. The elderly suffer many losses, such as deaths of a spouse and friends. The resulting sadness often causes forgetfulness that is wrongly perceived by society as dementia. JAMAL I. BITTAR Toledo, Ohio...