Alzheimer’s disease

Invisible enemy of the human brain

Most of you have heard about Alzheimer’s disease and may know how serious it is. It has always been thought that age is one of the factors for disease progression.

But if we look at Alzheimer’s disease etiology deeply, many surprising facts emerged.

Recently scientists found out that Alzheimer’s starts in the brain 20 years before the initial symptoms became appearable.

So the question arises how? How such a sincere disease became invisible for 20 years and later damage our whole life?

Now researchers can detect these changes in the brain by using brain scans and tests of the spinal fluid and blood. Researchers have examined a lot of young people, for example, ages 18 to 26, in the family. During the research, they found that some carried the Alzheimer’s gene, and none had any memory problems or other symptoms.

For people who carried the gene, the researcher found different changes that emerge to indicate the earliest signs of Alzheimer’s. As the hippocampus is the main part of the brain that plays an important role in memory, the family members who had Alzheimer’s genes showed greater activation in the hippocampus.

Also these people had less gray matter in parts of the brain known to be affected by Alzheimer’s.

A second important factor that is considered the reason for Alzheimer’s disease is a protein called- beta-amyloid, a toxic protein that builds up in the brains of those with Alzheimer’s, in the blood and spinal fluid.

During this research and to follow up on amyloid function, they looked at family members ranging in age from 20 to 56. They investigated that brain plaques formed by amyloid-beta starts to appear in the brains of family members who carried the gene by their late 20s, 15 years before memory problems became visible. Therefore this process is always considered a hallmark of Alzheimer’s, disease. The number of plaques starts to increase and clump together to form hard deposits in the brain. During the disease progression plaque levels in the brain increase through affected family members’ the late 20s and into their 30s, and then tended to level off around age 37.

All these results are evidence that changes that happen in the Alzheimer’s brain start many years before the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease.

Researchers in this field raises a new question about the earliest brain alteration involved in the predisposition to Alzheimer’s and the extent to how these changes could be targeted by future prevention therapies.

If we look at current drug treatments we can see that they have a small contribution to the treatment of Alzheimer’s. Because current drugs only lessen the relentless downward progression of the disease. But all researchers hope that the most effective and beneficial way to handle Alzheimer’s will be the earlier treatments before the changes that happen in Alzheimer’s disease.

It is still hope and if we researchers will be able to identify signs that someone is likely to get the disease, we may help them to start treatment earlier and as a result, this early intervention will reduce the onset of possibly the onset of Alzheimer’s symptoms