123 School Work

Is Alzheimers an inevitable part of ageing or is it a true disease

• This is a preview of the essay.
  To view the full text you must login!
  
  Is Alzheimers disease an inevitable part of ageing or is it a true disease? What implications does your answer have for the design of drug therapy?
  
  
  Alzheimers disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease which affects more than 15 million elderly people around the world, and around 75,000 per year in the UK. AD is the most common cause of dementia (accounting for about 65% of clinically diagnosed dementia). Dementia is described as an acquired global impairment of intellect, memory and personality, while AD itself is described as a progressive dementia of long duration, that increases in prevalence with age, that is irreversible and eventually leads to early death (usually via a massive infection rather than by AD per se). Primary symptoms of AD are cognitive, while its secondary symptoms are behavioural. The main pathological features of the disease, as discovered by post mortem studies and newer imaging techniques, include a progressive loss of neurones in some brain areas, along with deposition of amyloid-containing plaques extracellularly in these areas, and the presence of neurofibrillary tangles within the dead and dying neurones.
  
  This hypothesis that the accumulation of A is involved in the development of AD has lead to the development of many different drugs aimed at tackling this particular aspect of AD. Among these, the inhibition of A secretion from neuronal and non-neuronal cells is being actively pursued. One way this can be accomplished is by designing specific inhibitors of the proteases...