What is Alzheimer's Disease?
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive, neurodegenerative disease which will affect most of us at one point in time, and it’s prevalence increases with age.
Diagosis for Alzheimer's Disease
In the early stages in particular, dementia is often difficult to diagnose, since many symptoms are not recognized as such or are trivialized by the patient. 20% of actual dementia cases are reported to be incorrectly diagnosed as a different disease.
In early dementia the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease include memory loss, disorientation and confusion. These symptoms are caused by the loss of neurons and worsen with continuous neurodegeneration. The pathology of dementia is not solely the result of a cholinergic deficit. It is known that, chronically and pathologically elevated glutamate concentrations play an important role.
In general two main groups of dementia can be distinguished, requiring different types of treatment:
Depending on the stage of the disease, clinical symptoms of varying intensity dominate. With the progression of AD, treatment is aimed particularly at improving and stabilizing personal everyday functions, so as to keep patients independent for as long as possible.
Confederación Española de Familiares de Enfermos de Alzheimer
Tel: +34 948 174517
Fax: +34 948 265739
Last Updated 10-03-2015