Caregiver Resources
Alzheimer's Disease
What is Alzheimer's Disease?
Dementia indicates a loss of various brain functions, severely impacting an individual's activities and daily life.
Alzheimer's disease (AD), one of the most common forms of dementia, is a progressive neurodegenerative disease usually characterised by cognitive decline and memory loss that affects the motor system, speech, behaviour, and visuospatial orientation.
Nerve cells which responsible for thinking, language, and memory are damaged, causing the first symtomps related to thinking, language, and memory issues.
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How does Alzheimer's disease affect the brain?
Microscopic changes
Physiological changes
Microscopic Changes
Microscopic changes in Alzheimer's disease involve neurofibrillary tangles and amyloid plaques. These tangles and plaques are also shown in a healthy brain but have a more significant site, extent, and severity when presented in people with Alzheimer's disease.
Neurofibrillary tangles
Neurofibrillary tangles consist of tau protein twisted and located inside the brain cell. Tau protein is part of the microtubule that can transport nutrients and chemicals from cell to cell. This role usually stabilises the microtubules. However, microtubules disintegrate due to hyperphosphorylation in tau protein, which consequently interrupts neurotransmission and the brain's normal function.
Amyloid plaques
Amyloid plaques are formed by a toxic protein called beta-amyloid, which aggregates in extracellular space. The plaques affect communication between neurones, and interrupt the response capacity of the neurones from the hippocampus. The plaque production and removal balance affect Alzheimer's disease progression.
Physiological Changes
For physiological changes, the brain starts degenerating in the hippocampus related to memories. As the disease progresses, the degeneration also spreads to the outer layer or cortex of the brain.
Hippocampus is on the medial side of the temporal lobe. That is the reason why the symptoms of the patient also correlate with language. The gyri are flattened, and sulci are widened by loss of brain tissue and general atrophy. The ventricles, which stand space inside the brain also larger. The neurodegenerative disease progress from the hippocampus to another region in the temporal and parietal lobes. The disease can progress to the frontal lobe and posterior cortex in severe cases. Therefore, more symptoms related to each brain region will show in the patient.
What are signs and symptoms?
Early symptoms
difficulty remembering events, names, recent conservation
depression and apathy
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Later symptoms
personality change
impaired communication
poor judgement
confusion
disorientation
difficulty speaking, walking, swallowing
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Alzheimer's is a brain disease that causes a slow decline in memory, reasoning, and thinking skills. There are ten warning signs of Alzheimer's disease that we should know.
What are treatment and management?
In the United States, the population of Alzheimer’s patients has increased, while only five treatment options for Alzheimer’s cognitive symptoms are available. Alzheimer’s Association (2019) states that no medications are available for treatment or prevention; however, some drugs commonly prescribed are FDA-approved to cope with patients’ symptoms, such as Donepezil, Galantamine, Rivastigmine, Memantine, and Donepezil combined with memantine. Moreover, effectiveness of these medications is different for each person, so it is crucial to evaluate medications and alternative remedies to minimise the side effects of the drug.
For the management of Alzheimer’s patients, there are multidisciplinary approaches (cognitive, medical, functional, social, and psychological) to maintain a patient’s quality of life and well-being. In addition, lifestyle modifications such as doing more physical exercise, eating more healthy food, participating in social activity, and having more cognitive training can significantly increase the overall performance of a patient’s cognitive function.