Importance of Alzheimer's disease
Alzheimer's disease is a neurodegenerative disease which in its most common form occurs in persons over the age of 65 and for about 60% of the cases dementia is responsible. Alzheimer's disease symptoms are characterized by progressive deterioration of cognitive performance and it decreases daily activities and there are some neuropsychological and behavioral symptoms too. To date the cause of Alzheimer's disease is not fully understood. ApoE is a kind of gene variant which has been proved to create risk of developing Alzheimer's disease. Three genes have been found for triggering the early onset subtypes in addition to this. Their contribution in developing of Alzheimer's is about 30%. Alzheimer's disease cannot be cured yet. We cannot find so much positive effects of the currently approved drugs so far. They cannot slow down the progression of the disease. A consensus paper on the subject of Alzheimer's disease treatments got published by American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry in 2006.
Commonly found Alzheimer's disease symptoms
There are several stages of Alzheimer's disease. There are different levels of signs that can be seen in patients depending on the seriousness of their case. Memory loss is one of the most important Alzheimer's disease symptoms. Patients tend forget the places where they kept their valuable things. Also patients might get lost in places that they know quite well. They might not be able to remember about any conversation they already had. Sometimes they fail to remember normal things like their friends. Patients might forget everything they know in severe stages. They can lose their whole memory. The Alzheimer's disease treatments can be more effective if it is detected at very early stages.
Common Alzheimer's disease treatments
There are some medications that are meant for Alzheimer's disease treatments. These drugs make sure that acetylcholine in the brain is slowly degraded and therefore present in higher concentrations. This facilitates the reduction of acetylcholine levels by the death of neurons that produce the messenger substance to counteract. Galantamine and donepezil fall under this drug group. Rivastigmine is there too. The effectiveness is not same in all patients. We can know from the study that both the patch formulation and oral administration of Rivastigmine are meant for improvement of cognitive abilities of patients. According to the studies acetyl cholinesterase has some influence. Older people are mainly affected by Alzheimer's disease. The Alzheimer's is found mainly in western industrialized nations. It has affected 2% of all 65-year-olds. The symptoms are found in 3% of 70-year-olds and 20% of 85-year-olds. The age of youngest patient when he got affected by this disease was 27 years and he died at 33. This disease is very dangerous and it can lead a people to death very fast, Always be alert for Alzheimer's disease symptoms.
