Year: 2007
Type: article
Abstract: Alzheimer's disease is named after Alois Alzheimer, a German neuropathologist and psychiatrist. He was born on June 14, 1864 Marktbreit, Bavaria and died on December 19, 1915 Breslau. In 1907 he published his first case as a short communication under the title eine eigenartige Erkrankung der Hirnrinde (a peculiar disease of the cerebral cortex) [1]. In this paper he described the clinical and neuropathological features of a woman aged 51 years who had been institutionalised at the Frankfurt Hospital. The woman had displayed symptoms as: increased memory impairment, disorientation, unpredictable behaviour, aphasia, paranoia, auditory hallucinations, and pronounced psychosocial impairment. The histopathological findings of this case were neurofibrillary tangles (NFT): in the centre of a cell stand out several fibrils due to their characteristic thickness and peculiar impregnability and senile plaques: numerous miliary foci determined by storage of a peculiar material the cortex. Alzheimer published a longer article 1911 [2] which he focused on a second case, a demented 56-year-old man, who was admitted to the university psychiatric clinic Munich. The histopathological lesions the second case differed from those the first case. The second case did not display NFT, only plaques. In this article Alzheimer discussed the relationship of the plaques and fibrillary degeneration (NFT) senile and presenile dementia. Alzheimer concluded that these cases and other cases described [3], the alterations were the same manner and direction as senile dementia but of greater severity and had not been found yet any disease of younger people. These younger cases were senile psychoses, atypical forms of senile dementia. In 1910 the director of the Royal Psychiatric Clinic Munich, where Alzheimer worked, named this presenile dementia Alzheimer's disease [4]. Alzheimer's disease or Senile Dementia of the Alzheimer Type (SDAT) is now well known [4] as a slowly-progressive form of dementia, characterized by acquired impairment of intellectual functions. Memory impairment is a necessary feature for the clinical diagnosis. Change one of the following areas must also be present for any form of dementia to be diagnosed: language, decision-making ability, judgment, attention, and other related areas of cognitive function and personality [5]. The rate of progression is different for each person. If SDAT develops rapidly, it is likely to continue to progress rapidly. If it has been slow to develop, it will likely continue on a slow course.
Language: English
Subfield: Psychiatry and Mental health
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1585317855