Evolution Of Alzheimer's Disease

Imagine waking up one morning and not remembering what happened the other day, or important things like the names of loved one? That is what it feels like to have a progressed stage of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). There are many known diseases in the world, but AD is a very deadly disease with no known treatment or exact cause. AD is a disease that more commonly develops in the elderly and not younger people. AD not only affects the patient, but it also affects their family and friends because they are the ones who have to watch as their loved one suffers through this horrible disease. Although there is no exact underlying cause of AD, there have been research studies looking for what may be connected to the development of AD, along with research …show more content…
The researchers at the Departments of Neurology, Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center & †Family Medicine at Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, USA have a couple different treatments being tested to see if they have any effect on AD: The main mechanistic theory of AD is the amyloid hypothesis, according to which an imbalance in the production or clearance of the Aβ peptide results in accumulation of Aβ and initiation of a cascade of events leading to neurodegeneration and dementia77. This hypothesis has undergone an evolution, from one that was initially focused on the role of hard plaque in the development of disease and the removal of this plaque as the goal for disease-modifying drug development, to using specific soluble components of the plaques (oligomers and monomers) as potential drug targets. (Aggarwal, Shah, and …show more content…
With statistics such as these it is surprising that there is not even more research going into AD for a cause and a cure. The authors of the article Advances In Alzheimer's Disease Drug Development say how there is not currently a drug to counteract AD, but all efforts are looking for a