Alzheimer´s Disease (AD) consist on the memory loss, this is a fatal disease in the brain where the brain cells die causing a steady decline in memory, reasoning, thinking and social skills. There are many symptoms that vary from person to person as well as the degree and intensity of the symptoms. AD is one of the common cause of Dementia, and as of today there are medication and management that temporarily improves the symptoms and providing AD patients an independent life, research is persistently aiming to discover a treatment that can prevent and/or slow significantly the disease.
There are two types of Alzheimer’s:
Early-Onset:
It is an uncommon type since it appears before the age of 60, but has the tendency to get worse rapidly. This runs in family and genes have been indentified.
People with Down syndrome have more possibilities of developing Early-Onset AD when they have 40 to 50 years of age the symptoms start to appear.
Young people who develop AD have more brain abnormalities among others, Early-Onset AD appears to be attached to a genetic defect in Chromosome 14, different to Late-Onset that is not linked to it.
Late-Onset:
Different to Early-Onset, this type is the most common, AD symptoms appear after the age of 65 and it affects 90% of the elderly and at least half of the people over the 85 years of age and may or may not be inherited. This type is also known as Sporadic Alzheimer´s disease.
Other type:
Familial Alzheimer's disease (FAD):
which is known to be completely hereditary. Families affected by FAD have at least two family members in each generation that experiences AD. This type is very rare and it is presented in less than 1% of diagnoses patients.
