Β-Amyloid Infections: A Case Study

Alzheimer 's disease (AD) was discovered by a German doctor Alois Alzheimer in 1906 when he found amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles in the autopsy of a woman who died of an unknown mental disease. The extracellular amyloid plaque deposits, composed of insoluble amyloid-Beta peptide were hypothesized to be the main etiological factor. “The most important abnormality is an excess of Amyloid-beta peptides brought about through either overproduction or failure in degradation.” (Uzun, Kozumplik, & Folnegović-Smalc, 2011) Later, it was discovered that intracellular neurofibrillary tangles composed of hyper-phosphorylated, helically-paired tau

Patients who suffer from AD also have their memory, ability to learn and to carry out activities affected. Since, AD is not just dementia related there is also another aspect to the disease that causes “progressive neurodegeneration” (Chen). The symptoms of AD are usually slow, but they get worse over time and start to affect your daily life. The majority of people affected by AD are aged 65 and older. If a family member has AD then future generations from that family member are more likely to have AD. This is a very important disease to try to find a cure because “by 2050 as many as 115 million people worldwide will have developed dementia“ (Chen). As of right now “AD affects more than 5 million people in the U.S. alone” (Chen). This creates a huge burden on the family because it leaves their loved ones unable to function alone or to be able to do anything alone. This puts the burden on the family because then they need to find the patient a home to live in to be taken care of or they have to bring the patient in to their home and take care of the patient 24/7. People suffering from AD need to be attended to at all times of the day and constantly reminded why and what they’re doing. This affects a family because then they’re not able to do their daily routines or continue to live their normal lives. The reason is because all of their energy needs to be focused on the family member suffering form the

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a progressive and fatal form of dementia, frequently seen in the elderly altering their cognition, thought process and behavior. AD is reported in about half of patients that have a dementia diagnosis; one study states that about 10.3% of the population over 65 years is affected by dementia with an increase to almost 50% over the age of 8 (Beattie, 2002). Alzheimer’s disease is not a normal part of the aging process in humans, but rather found in a group of diseases that affect the brain leading to a decline in mental and physical control. AD when diagnosed has a very slow and gradual course, initially affecting the individual’s short term memory (Beattie, 2002). Alzheimer’s disease is the 6th leading cause of death, affecting more than five million people in the United States and is also one of the most common forms of dementia. Dementia can be defined as a disorder of progressive cognitive impairment severe enough to affect daily functions of an individual’s life (Fillit, et al., 2002).

Currently there are approximately two to four million Americans that have AD, and due to the fact that the population as a whole will age, by the middle of the 21st century, that number might reach 14 million. Rarely does AD strike people in their 40s or 50s, and when it does it is considered to be a subdivision called early-onset AD. Elderly people age 65 or older is the class most often effected by Alzheimer's Disease. Three percent of all people age 65 to 74 have Alzheimer's. Nineteen percent of those between the ages of 75 and 84 are affected, and for those over age 85 forty-seven percent are affected. The average cost of caring for someone with Alzheimer's Disease is considerable, and is approximately $174,000 per person over the course of the disease. This figure is for those persons who can be cared for at home by a friend or family member. If the condition is bad enough and the person's caregiver has to seek outside help, such as a nursing home, the cost rises. (Robinson, 1999)

Alzheimer’s disease, also known as AD is often insidious on set, it can take months up to years to go from a mild to severe impairment. (Mayeux, 2010) The disease is irreversible and has no cure. “The disease affects 500,000 Canadians, 71,000 of those are under the age of 65” (VanDenBroek, 2013). AD affects the person by impacting their neurological function, their cognition and their behaviour.

Since 1907, when Alois Alzheimer characterized AD, many hypotheses and theories have been developed. However, there has been little progress toward understanding the pathophysiology that could lead to a cure.

Also, along with Alzheimer’s, there are other diseases such as Parkinson’s which show no improvement and are a huge liability to the health care system. A lot of research is ongoing since ages but no drug is so far available which can cure such a disease. AD occurs due to progressive loss of the neural cells, which causes loss of memory, which might end up as fatal. Recent advances in the research have found the AD occurs to loss of mitochondrial function and mis-folded proteins. Currently six drugs have been approved in the United states for AD. All the drugs have shown moderate improvement in behavioral and functional measures in the

Amyloid β-peptide (Aβ) is the major component of the senile plaques, and the amount of Aβ to form the plaques is correlative with the degree of neuronal damage and cognitive deficit. Although four million new cases of dementia are recognized yearly, and nearly 70% of these cases are ascribed to AD, there is still now not fully elucidated and no efficient method for its

Amyloid Beta is a peptide of amino acids. This peptide has been found to be accumulating in the brains of those with Alzheimer's disease (AD), leading to one of the leading hypotheses as to what causes AD, the Amyloid Beta hypothesis. This hypothesis states that Amyloid Beta accumulation leads to a cascade event, which in turn begins to kills cells over time. This killing of cells leads to memory loss, and later death. Although this hypothesis is the most prominent, and believed to be the best amongst many experts, it does have its drawbacks. According to neurologists John Hardy and Dennis J. Selkoe one of the biggest concerns with this hypothesis is that “The most frequently voiced objection is that the number of amyloid deposits in the

Alzheimer’s disease (henceforth: AD) though has four approved drugs, yet still treatment remains ineffectual and as such continues to pose a great burden to families of affected individuals, societies as well as developed countries. The complexity of the pathogenesis of AD makes it difficult to ascertain its cause along with effective treatment.

In 1906, Alois Alzheimer was one of the first to label Alzheimer, however it was referred to as ‘’senile dementia’’ until the 1960s and it was treated as a normal part of ageing (Mastin, 2010). Sperling et al, (2011) suggested that years before the diagnosis of AD, the physiological process associated with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is already there. Alzheimer's disease is as a major degenerative disease of the brain, responsible for deterioration of the patient’s cognitive and motor function. Up to the present, there has been only treatment treating the symptoms with temporary effect and not a disease free treatment (Horn et al, 1993).

As the US population ages, Alzheimer’s has increased significantly (71%) (AA, 2016). In 2013, there was over 84,000 deaths from AD in the U.S, however in 2016 the mortality rate doubled to 700,000 (AA, 2016). Among people age 70, 61% of those with AD are expected to die before the age of 80 compared with 30% of people without Alzheimer’s (AA, 2016).

AD is the most common devastating neurodegenerative disorder and the cause of dementia affecting mainly elderly population. It is found that 24.3 million people have dementia today. The cause of AD is still controversial but the main pathology is deposition of Amyloid Plaques and neurofibrillary tangles in the cerebellum. The most of currently existed medications aim to clear these depositions to delay the progression of the disease but it can't completely cure it.The pathology of AD starts to develop over a decade prior to the symptoms, so we have to direct our efforts to detect the disease early and control the modifiable risk factors to prevent the development of AD later in old age or delay the onset of AD by 5-10 years. The most important

A disease is a medical condition that affects a living organism either physically, mentally or emotionally. It is basically a condition involving a pathological process along with a set of various symptoms; some easily noticeable whereas others quite difficult to detect, making their treatment process slower. (Healio.com, 2012) Nevertheless, the social and economic impacts followed by the diagnosis of the disease are generally quite drastic.

Most of the lesions in the brain of an AD patient are from plaques, which consist of beta amyloid peptides that are derived from APP (amyloid precursor protein) 7. APP (amyloid precursor protein) is located on the cell membrane and consists of N extracellular terminal, short C intracellular terminal, a single hydrophobic transmembrane domain and a metal binding site 16, and there are two ways for APP cleaving (figure 2):