It is estimated that in Spain between 500 and 600 thousand people with Alzheimer
Written by:Alzheimer's is a very common disease in people over 65 years. In Spain, it is estimated that there are between 500 and 600 thousand patients.
Dementia is a loss of intellectual functions such gravity that affects everyday life. Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common cause of this "syndrome" dementia, although other many (approximately 200), such as vascular dementia, Parkinson or associated posttraumatic.
Symptoms of Alzheimer's
Alzheimer's disease begins with a clear memory loss; the patient does not know what he ate, what he did the day before or what news recently occurred in the country. In later stages, the difficulty of daily money management (careful with this phase) appears, cooking and finally, dressing and walking.
Causes of Alzheimer's
More than 10 years ago it was discovered that there is a gene that increases the likelihood of developing the disease in those individuals who carry. This gene called APO-Ƹ4 has to do with the transport of fats in our body.
Unfortunately, still not the cause of this disease is known but what we do know, is that physical exercise and intellectual activity, as well as control of vascular risk factors, prevent it .
Diagnosis of Alzheimer's
The diagnosis of Alzheimer disease is clinical and pathological, that is, in life we can only make a diagnosis of "probable Alzheimer's". To carry it out, the doctor examines the patient's clinical help of a blood test, a neurophysiological test (EEG), imaging (CT, MRI ...), and neuropsychological tests (Hopkins Verbal Learning, Buschke ...). Sometimes, for diagnosis can reach extremely expensive and sophisticated tests used as positron emission tomography (PET).
Treatment of Alzheimer's
Alzheimer's treatment focuses on the one hand, intake of drugs (acetylcholinesterase inhibitors and glutamate) and cognitive rehabilitation of the patient, and on the other, to help and advise their families and loved ones.
Advances in the diagnosis of Alzheimer's
It should be noted that the most recent advances in the fight against Alzheimer's disease have occurred in diagnostic methodologies: the use of positron emission tomography (PET) or the identification of a special type of protein in the fluid surrounding the brain (cerebrospinal fluid) are some of the new techniques s detection using specialists in Neurology .
