The Alzheimer’s disease : A slow growing dweller in India.

The Alzheimer’s disease : A slow growing dweller in India.

Apart from the diseases caused by the infection and dysfunction of the body organ, the Alzheimer’s disease fall in the class of proteiopathies .
Proteiopathy is a condition, when a protein become unable to fold properly and become inactive, which start aggregating in the cell. The cell, in response to these toxic aggregates goes into the apoptosis (cell death). 

There are about forty such diseases, occurs among the human.

The Alzheimer’s disease is most common among the proteiopathies, which can be characterised by

•  Memory loss and
•  Cognitive decline. 

At the molecular level, a protein named APP(Amyloid precursor protein) because of some known and many unknown reason start producing an insoluble aggregation prone species Aβ42 instead of Aβ40, which is a product of APP processing in normal condition. The process of the aggregation of the protein is more pronounced in the hippocampus and the cortex region of the brain, which are known for the learning and memory of the person.

Alzheimer is the most common and leading cause of the dementia. 

Among the early symptoms the patient face memory lapses, they start difficulty in recalling the recent events and learning the new information. 
Language problem, they are always in search of the words during the conversation. 
Loss in visuospatial skill, that is, they fails to judge the distance by seeing. 

Among other symptoms include loss of concentration, mood swings, planning, decision making, and doing a task.

Later stage of the disease is more worse with the symptoms like memory loss, hallucination,
difficulty in recognising, reasoning and moving.
The person may develop the abnormal behaviour .

Among the risk factors of the disease are aging, gender (females are more prone, may be because of the reduction in the sexual hormone production, genetics(mutation in certain genes may cause the early onset of the Alzheimer disease which can be inherited to the next generation), environmental pollution(it may be due to the compromised blood brain barrier) and sometimes injury.

Diagnosis is very difficult, there is not a single test which can diagnose the disease. Some test like CT scan and MRI are used to rule out the possibility of brain tumour and other lesion which can leads to the same kind of symptoms.

In india, most of the cases of Alzheimer remains undiagnosed because of the unawareness and the late onset of the disease. 
According to a report, there were about 3.7 millions peoples with dementia in india in 2010, which may lead to the Alzheimer in their early future. The number is expected to be doubled in 2030.

 The estimated cost to take care of a person with the disease is about 40,000 annually. The disease is fourth most common cause of the death in developed countries, but the burden of the disease on the developing country like india will be worst, further our country is a habitat of the many infectious disease agents and organisms, these may make



the condition for the patient more painful. There is no treatment available for the disease, scientists have plenty of fail trials on the animals and very few promising trials. It seems to be a long way to go for the disease treatment, whose origin, cause, diagnosis and the treatment is still not known. 
Only, we can take the prevention according to the knowledge we have about the disease.

In case of any queries and problems, always consult your Family Physician.
                                                            
   Dr Ibrar A. Siddique (National Institute of immunology, India)   
   Dr Mohit Bansal