1. Alzheimer’s disease is an irreversible and progressive disease of the brain that slowly destroys memory, thinking, language, and, over time, even the ability to carry out the simplest tasks. In most affected people, symptoms first appear after age 60 . The formation of amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles in the brain are two of the main characteristics of the disease.
2. Currently around 46.8 million people worldwide suffer from Alzheimer’s and other dementias . The 2015 World Alzheimer Report, released by the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and King’s College London.
3. Having insulin resistance or type 2 diabetes raises the risk of developing brain plaques associated with Alzheimer’s disease, as recently demonstrated by Kensuke Sasaki, professor of neuropathology at Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan.
4. A pioneering study coordinated by the Hospital Clínic de Barcelona and published in The American Journal of Medicine last March linked disorders of higher brain functions with high blood cholesterol levels for the first time.
5. High doses of vitamin Bthey canhalve brain shrinkagein older people experiencing some signs of Alzheimer’s disease, according to research by scientists from the Oxford Project for Research on Memory and Aging (OPTIMA).
6. People with Alzheimer’s who havea big head have a better memoryand more ability to think than those patients with the same disease and a smaller head, even if Alzheimer’s has killed the same number of neurons in both cases, according to the journal recently publishedNeurology.
7. One of the first functions that is affected in people who develop Alzheimer’s is the lexical system and semantic categories, especially those referring to living beings, which are lost before those of non-living beings (tools, vehicles, clothing , etc.). Hence, a study carried out by the National University of Distance Education (UNED) has just proposed thatan enumeration test of various animals or plants to detect early the development of Alzheimer’sor another type of dementia. Theolfactory problemsthey can also serve as an early indicator of Alzheimer’s disease.
8. Researchers from the University of Granada have designed asmart system that could anticipate the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. It involves processing brain images acquired using computerized tomography techniques, after administering a radiopharmaceutical to the patient intravenously. The researchers compare the results with an automatic classification algorithm, developed from a database with images of the brain of sick and healthy people, which allows their classification with aaccuracy close to 95 percent.
