Chronic Neurodegenerative Disease

Alzheimer’s disease has been around since 1901; a German psychiatrist Alois Alzheimer was the first man to identify and follow a case that is now known as Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s disease is involved in synaptic deterioration and neuronal cell death, and causes degeneration in the hippocampus and amyloid deposition in blood vessels, ultimately cell death is the cause of the disease. There are various ways that someone can acquire the Alzheimer’s, a few include; family history, obesity, and Down syndrome. Some symptoms of the disease are, memory loss, difficulty completing familiar daily tasks, confusion with

On November 26th 1901, Alois Alzheimer, an assistant physician at the psychiatric institution in Frankfurt met Auguste D, aged 51 (Berrios , 2004). After talking to her and carrying out the preliminary diagnostics, the physicist realized during talking to her that his patient was giving different answers to the same questions. She also often stopped mid-sentence as if she had forgotten what she was going to say. She seemed confused and anxious. When she died, Alzheimer received her brain for analysis. When he was inspecting the brain, he came to notice the neurons had thick, strongly staining fibrils. Moreover, the cortex was full of plaques of unknown composition. Auguste D’s brain

Alois Alzheimer was born in Marktbreit, Germany, in 1864, and showed a pioneer ability for science. After gaining his medical degree, he worked in hospitals in Frankfurt, where he met Auguste Deter, a 51-year-old woman suffering from a short-term memory loss. He was soon capable to quarantine the pathological basis of severe dementia, so far-reaching that the condition became known as Alzheimer's disease, named after him (Hippius & Neundörfer, 2003).

Auguste Deter was the first patient who had such a serious case of dementia that Alois Alzheimer decided to look at her brain when she died. Deter was 51 years old when she began to show signs of what is now considered Alzheimer’s Disease or AD. When she died, Alois Alzheimer, a German physician, decided to look into her brain. He wished to see what was causing her to act so wild and uncontrollable. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, he found that parts of her brain and the cells seemed to be dead. The disease soon was named after Alzheimer because of his discovery and has grown to be recognized throughout the world. While there are other diseases in need of research, Alzheimer's is a growing disease that is in need of more research

A few days ago my grandmother passed away after battling with Alzheimer’s disease for more than ten years. During the last couple of years she was alive I barely ever visited her, and I never understood why she was always in bed, and whenever I went to go see her she never remembered who I was. I feel that because of this disease, I lost my grandmother a long time ago; hopefully by the end of this paper I will have a better understanding about the disease that took her away, years ago.

ALS stands for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. This disease is a progressive neurodegenerative disease. A progressive neurodegenerative disease is a disease that will affect your brain and spinal cord. Since this is a progressive disease, you will deteriorate as time goes by. In order to move, the motor neurons in the brain reaches the spinal cord and then reaches the muscles throughout the body. ALS affects the motor neurons and since this disease is progressive, it will continue to affect the motor neurons by killing it until there is you lose control. Once you lose control of your muscles,it will start to atrophy or waste away from no nourishment. Since the spinal cord is the main part that signals and controls muscle movement, that

After she died Dr. Alzheimer’s found various abnormal clumps in her brain (amyloid plaques) and tangled

In 1906, Dr. Alois Alzheimer saw differences in the brain of a woman that passed away from a bizarre illness in the brain. Before she died she experienced loss of memory, had trouble speaking, and unpredictable behavior. When Dr. Alois Alzheimer examined her brain after death, he noticed that there were abnormal clumps, which are now known as amyloid plaques, and tangled bundles of fibers known as neurofibrillary tangles. While symptoms start to appear after the age of 60, up to 5.1 million Americans may have the disease today.

Alzheimer's is a neurodegenerative disorder that affects the neurons within the brain, causing memory loss as well as language, and behavioral disturbances. An Alzheimer's brain contains Amyloid plaques that form toxic proteins which are called amyloid beta. The amyloid plaques start to spread throughout the brain causing tangles to form in the brain. The tangles are a form of twisted threads of protein. In compartment to a “normal” brain with an Alzheimer's brain, that Alzheimer's brain is remarkably smaller in size and contains fluid flied spaces.

Alzheimer’s disease is a common neurodegenerative disease. It is the most common form of dementia which is a general term for memory loss and other intellectual abilities serious enough to interfere with daily life (Alzheimer’s Disease & Dementia). Dementia and Alzheimer’s have been around for centuries, but Alzheimer’s disease wasn’t first described until 1906 by Dr. Aloysius Alzheimer. In the past, there was a stigma for elderly people with the disease. People with dementia and Alzheimer’s were seen as a burden on society. Society has only recently accepted and cared for people with the disorder because more information is known about the disease. There wasn’t much treatment in the past accept for locking those away in institutions or just being kept hidden by family members (Batsch). There are now treatments and research being done for dementia and Alzheimer’s, but no cure remains and many individuals still suffer from the disease. Future treatments for the disease include taking aim at significant aspects of the disease like fighting beta-amyloid plaques, recruiting the immune system, reducing brain cell inflammation, and studying the heart-head connection (Alzheimer’s Treatments: What’s on the Horizon?). There are other ways to possibly treat the disease in the future as well. Hopefully from looking at the history of the disease, how the disease affects the brain and body, and future treatments, Alzheimer’s disease and dementia will be a thing of the past.

Parkinson’s disease is a chronic neurodegenerative disorder characterized by degeneration and cell loss of the substantia nigra, which causes disturbances of voluntary motor control [5]. It impairs ones ability to produce movements and is commonly associated with difficulties of daily living. Parkinson’s disease (PD) affects approximately 1.5% to 2.0% of the population over the age of sixty years old [2] and “… it is estimated that 6 million individuals worldwide are currently living with PD,” [7] (pg323). Parkinson’s sufferers often experience physical distress and an altered quality of life.

Alois Alzheimer was a German physician who studied the changes in the brain and the strange abnormal structures, that were located in specific areas affecting the neurons and, other cells by using the microscope. In 1906, he had a 51yr old patient named Auguste D. who was experiencing some cognitive deficits at a time that was new to society. Auguste D. had experienced a total loss of memory which affected her relationship with family because, she could not remember them and was behaving in strange paranoid ways(psychological changes), (ALZ, 2017).  Prior to her death, Alois Alzheimer was troubled and curious about the causes of this behavior which led him to carry on a careful examination of her brain. He performed an autopsy and found some

The ability of doctors to diagnose the disease has improved in recent years, but a conclusive diagnosis can only be established when autopsy or brain biopsy shows that nerve cell loss has occurred in the parts of the brain associated with cognitive functioning. In 1906 a German physician named Alois Alzheimer describes the haunting case of Auguste D., a patient who had profound memory loss, unfounded suspicions about her family, and other worsening psychological changes. This was the first known case of Alzheimer’s disease. In 1910, Emil Kraepelin, a German psychiatrist who worked with Dr. Alzheimer, first named "Alzheimer's Disease" in the eighth edition of his book called Psychiatrie. During 1976, Neurologist Robert Katzman identified Alzheimer's disease as the most common cause of

Huge breakthroughs in neurological science came when they stared a method of dissecting mouse brains. They took the brain of a mouse and sliced it so thin that it was translucent, each a thousandth of the strand of the human hair. After doing this they would

Neurodegenerative diseases are conditions that affect the function of the neurons in the brain. These diseases impair cognitive function and have a large negative effect on daily life. Neurodegenerative diseases are both incurable and debilitating as they always result in progressive degeneration and ultimately the death of neurons. These diseases can result in dementias, impairments in mental functioning, and/or ataxias, impairments in movement. The risk of being affected by a neurodegenerative disease notably increases with age. An amalgamation of environmental and genetic factors can supplement this risk; for example, a person’s genes may predispose them to a neurodegenerative disease, but certain environmental factors may increase their