Alzheimer's disease: An alternative approach.

ABSTRACT

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common neurodegenerative cortical dementia. It starts with memory loss, spatial disorientation in people above the age of 65 yr with a preference to females. Its incidence is expected to increase threefold by 2050. It affects almost one out of ten persons above the age of 65 years. Majority of patients are sporadic, but a very small percentage is autosomal dominant. The pathomechanisms postulated include amyloid cascade hypothesis according to which mutation in amyloid precursor protein causes Aß aggregation. The next hypothesis is signal transducer and activation of transcription 3 (STAT3) causing aberration in intracellular signalling pathways. Senile plaques and neurofibrillary tangles are other important pathological changes reported. It is observed that dementia research has not yielded the expected result world over, and therefore, the pitfalls with reference to known facts about diagnosis, clinical features, pathogenic mechanisms, assessment of progression, biomarkers, treatment and prevention, as well as brief information on our experiments with relatively inexpensive methods of differentiating the most common types of dementia AD and frontotemporal dementia are discussed.