Research Paper

Alzheimer’s disease

In 1901 Dr. Alois Alzheimer conducted a study on a woman by the name of Auguste Deter who was admitted to a state asylum for psychotic behavior. “The woman was 51 years old at the time and suffered from many problems such as cognitive and language difficulties, and auditory hullucinations, delusions, aggressive behavior and paranoia” according to the information in the The Human Genome .   During this time Dr. Alzheimer teamed up with a psychiatrist named Emil Kraepelin who lived in Germany. When Auguste Deter died in April 1906 her brain was sent to the team to be studied.   The two doctors presented and published their findings the following year in 1907. The term “Alzheimer’s Disease” was fist labeled by Kraepelin in 1907, not by Alzheimer himself. Dr. Alzheimer was not trying to discover a new disease, he presented his study to show what was called “Senile Dementia” could be seen in women in their 50s. In his report on the post mortem subject, he found plaques, and tangles in her brain. It was known at this time that these major findings in “Senile Dementia” were not new but that they had been reported before in 1887, by Dr. Beljahow.
In Medical News Today“Alzheimer’s disease can be described as a progressive neurologic disease of the brain that leads to irreversible loss of neurons and loss of intellectual abilities like memory and reasoning”. Although science has come a along way in the past 100 years, there is no current cure for the disease.   Scientists are still not sure what fully causes this disease, because there are so many series of events in the brain over a large period of time that can contribute to the onset of Alzheimer’s.   According to the National Institute on Aging, leading the federal effort on aging research, there are some factors that could contribute to Alzheimer’s disease such as genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors. In most of the cases, the disease develops later in life, usually after age 60. There is... [continues]

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