Inherited Alzheimers?

By Bill Craig
You may be carrying the gene for it, which means you got it from one of your parents. Yes, it is rare. The last study shows 5% of those with AD may have acquired it from a parent.

Both of mine had senile dementia before passing away in the 90's. Could it have been Alzheimer's? They were never diagnosed with it, but I suspect it was - although senile dementia and Alzheimer's are two very different diseases. More about that later.

Before I link you to a very important study concerning Inherited Alzheimer's, you may be interested to know that the disease was actually discovered over 100 years ago, by Alois Alzheimer, a Bavarian physician who examined the brain tissue of one of his patients who had exhibited progressive problems with memory, language and behavior. Neurofibrillary (pronounced NUR-o-FI-bri-lair-ee) tangles and neuritic (pronounced NUR-rit-tic) plaques are the technical descriptions of these changes.

Most of you (as I was) are probably surprised that the disease was discovered that long ago, right? But researchers predict that global prevalence of Alzheimer’s will quadruple by 2050 to more than 100 million, at which time 1 in 85 persons worldwide will be living with the disease.

If you have early onset AD, here is the link for the study being conducted for Inherited AD: http://mednews.wustl.edu/news/page/normal/12060.html

If you are interested in participating, send an e-mail to : participate@dian-info.org

Thanks for reading and come on over to the AD Message Board at http://www.alz.org/index.asp for some support and TLC.

Choose the section called Living With Alzheimer's and scroll all the way down to the end of the drop-down menu.

See you next time

Bill

Bill

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