Symptoms And Treatments Of Alzheimer 's Disease

Dementia is a disorder that leads to a gradual loss of the cognitive capacity of an individual, ultimately affecting one’s daily activities. Dementia does manifests through the accompanying disorders because it does not exist on its own. In other words, dementia is a disorder that comes about through the existence of the related disorders. The main ones are four, but they are not the only disorders that cause dementia. These include Lewy Bodies dementia (LBD), Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and vascular dementia (VD). Others include mixed dementia, Huntington’s disease, Huntington’s disease, Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome, Parkinson’s disease, Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease, Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus and Frontotemporal dementia. According to Ram (2006), these disorders have a broad spectrum of impacts on the patients besides having devastating effects on the overall economy of the world’s nations especially when the number is significantly high. The paper intends to dig out the milestones the dementia disorder has undergone.

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).

Alzheimer’s disease is a brain disease with many different stages that slows one’s lifestyle and has no real cure. Alzheimer’s disease is named after Dr. Alois Alzheimer. The disease first appears around the age of sixty. Studies have concluded that as many as 5.1 million Americans have Alzheimer’s disease. A person with Alzheimer’s loses connections between neurons in the brain (1).

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a form of dementia that causes problems with memory, thinking, and behavior. AD typically involves the development of a progressive neuropsychiatric disorder that is characterized by gradual memory impairment, loss of acquired skills and emotional disturbances (Lee, Y. J., Han, S. B., Nam, S. Y., Oh, K. W., & Hong, J. T.). Every 67 seconds an individual in the United States develops AD. AD is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States. There are 5.3 million Americans diagnosed with AD (Latest Alzheimer's Facts and Figures). AD is one of the few degenerative diseases that cannot be prevented, stopped, or cured (Latest Alzheimer's Facts and Figures). Post-mortem examination of the brain of AD patients usually

Last year my maternal Aunt Kate passed away. She had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) about eight years earlier. My maternal grandmother also had been diagnosed with dementia before her death. Later this month I will accompany my 77-year-old mother to her neurologist appointment. While she has not been diagnosed with AD or dementia, she has been prescribed Donepezil (Aricept), one of the newer drugs that are thought to reduce the decline in memory in patients that have or might be developing dementia. I welcome opportunities to learn more about AD and the effects on the brain. The Alzheimer’s Association website, ALZ.org, is filled with a wealth of this information. Especially interesting was “Inside the Brain: An Interactive Tour.” I learned about changes the normal brain experiences from early, mild to moderate and severe stages of Alzheimer’s disease.

According to the Center for Disease Control, there are over five million Americans with Alzheimer’s disease. The life expectancy for each person is different. Some may live with the disease for more than ten years and some only last three. There

Typical AD is mainly common in the age range of 70-80. It is associated with a lack of memory and inability to retain new information. (Blackwell, 2014)

This paper will provide an overview of Alzheimer’s disease. It will explore its etiology, pathophysiology, risk factors and their modification, diagnostic and medical treatment including pharmacology, health education, and nursing care of Alzheimer’s disease based off nursing literature. It will go into detail of a patient who has experienced Alzheimer’s for 11 years and their specialized plan of care including their medical history, physical assessment, concept mapping, nursing diagnoses, and specific interventions to the identified nursing problems. This plan of care will be evaluated based upon the patient’s responses.

Alzheimer’s Disease (AD), first described and named after Dr Alois Alzheimer in 1906, is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder, neuropathologically characterised by gross cerebral atrophy, extracellular senile plaques and intracellular neurofibrillary tangles (Zetterberg & Mattsson, (2014). Clinically, AD is characterised by memory loss, cognitive impairment and behavioural and psychological changes (Carter, Resnick, Mallampalli & Kalbarczyk, 2012). The Behavioural and Psychological Symptoms of Dementia (BPSD) have a significant impact on the quality of life of the person with dementia and the caregiver (Rouch et al, 2014). The existence and intensity of the BPSD has a greater negative impact on caregivers then the actual cognitive decline (Rouch et al, 2014).

Why do people wake up in the morning? Is it to drive to school or work or perhaps to make it to the gym for that early morning workout session? Regardless of why people wake up, one thing that people have in common is that they’re aware of who they are and what they want to accomplish, well for the most part that is. There are many people living in this world with a disease called Alzheimer’s, which is a very deadly and mysterious disease. Alzheimer’s is a type of Dementia that causes problems with memory, thinking and behavior. This disease is a progressive cognitive disorder that deteriorates brain cells eventually to the point of destroying them. This kind of deterioration leads to memory loss as well as alterations in thinking and

This paper reviews studies about Alzheimer’s disease, the symptoms, probable causes, and stages of the disease, duration, and its treatment options. It is intended to support readers engaging them with literature about the disease and a summation of available research findings and descriptive studies that include analysis of outcomes and cognitive training, rehabilitation and stimulation. Its primary goals are to find out whether the disease can be prevented or delayed. In addition to highlighting these different perspectives on the study of Alzheimer’s disease, this review highlights key findings from the research and suggests directions for continuing inquiry in this field.

When I began, I knew next to nothing about this deadly disease. All I knew was that it was a widespread and dangerous disease, capable of ruining the lives of many American people. When I found the topic, I had been researching about different forms of degenerative diseases in the hopes of finding a suitable topic for my project. I saw Alzheimer’s was both the most common disease in the field and the most deadly, and immediately I decided. After finding the topic, I began researching the guiding question of my research: What treatments are currently available to treat Alzheimer’s and what entails the different stages of the disease?

When you think of Alzheimer 's disease, the first thing that comes to mind is

A disease that sweeps across the nation and affects nearly 80% of the population ages 60 and up is known as Alzheimer’s. A misconception that many people believe about Alzheimer’s is that it is a part of getting older. It is not true. Alzheimer’s is an intricate neurodegenerative disorder associated with “protein misfolding and aggregation, oxidative stress, mitochondrial abnormalities and neuroinflammatory process at a molecular level” and “synaptic loss, cholinergic dysfunction, and abnormal protein depositions in the brain”. Some symptoms associated with this disease are delusion, inability to recall or retain information, mental decline, aggression, personality changes, mood swings, and etc. Though there are currently no cures for Alzheimer’s, cholinesterase inhibitors such as donepezil, galantamine, rivastigmine and NMDA receptor antagonist memantine are used as pharmacotherapy treatment to slow down the progression and temporarily alleviate symptoms. This essay is primarily focused on Donepezil and the cognitive alleviation it results in for patients with Alzheimer’s. The first part of the paper will summarize two preclinical and two clinical trials done on Donepezil to subjects with Alzheimer’s or Alzheimers like symptoms. The second part will describe the implications and future directions from all the results obtained.

Dementia is a progressive process, with the symptoms and decline in function often worsening, sometimes rapidly, overtime. Although the elderly population are most frequently affected, many younger patients can also be affected. Currently, no cure, be it medical or behavioural, has been isolated, however certain treatments have proved beneficial in delaying the onset or staying off further rapid deterioration. In addition to pharmaceutical treatment modalities, other support and managerial techniques may enable n enhanced quality of life.