Focus on Alzheimer’s What is dementia? Dementia is a syndrome of acquired progressive cognitive dysfunction that affects the content of consciousness rather than the level of consciousness. Cognitive dysfunction includes varying degrees of impairment in memory, language, and visuospatial functioning, personality abnormalities and reduced cognitive (generalizing, calculating, judging, synthesizing, and problem-solving) abilities, often accompanied by behavioral and affective abnormalities, and a significant reduction in the patient’s ability to perform daily living, social, and work activities. What is Alzheimer’s disease? Alzheimer’s disease, also known as Alzheimer’s disease, is a chronic degenerative degeneration of the brain. Clinical manifestations include progressive far and near memory impairment, deterioration of analytical judgment, mood changes, behavioral disorders, and even blurred consciousness, and finally death. Hidden attack onset, the gradual onset of chronic progressive disease, mainly intellectual disability, family members often can not tell when the patient from when the disease, until the dementia symptoms are more obvious to the hospital examination. What are the signs of Alzheimer’s disease? Forgetfulness; the patient may forget to bring meals to the table or even forget meals that have been prepared. Inadequate use of words; the patient may forget even simple words or may not be able to express himself/herself using appropriate phrases. Confused concept of time and place; the patient may get lost in the streets and doorways near the residence. Decreased judgment; the patient may completely forget children in his/her care and leave the house, or may be easily deceived. Loss of abstract thinking; the patient often forgets the passwords he or she has set for the passbook and the amount of money he or she has saved. Disorganization of objects; the patient often puts objects in inappropriate places or treasures many scraps such as scraps of paper and cloth as if they were treasures. Temperament and behavioral changes; in a short period of time, behavior and mood may change from a calm state to tearfulness or snapping. Personality changes; the patient’s personality may undergo drastic and irrational changes, such as suspiciousness and mistrust of others. Loss of initiative; often becomes lazier than before and is reluctant to participate in any activities, even those he or she used to enjoy. There is also a lack of enthusiasm for people. What are the manifestations of Alzheimer’s disease? 1.Early manifestations: various manifestations can occur. Memory impairment is the first manifestation, mainly near memory impairment, the events of the day, just done or said words can not be remembered, familiar names can not be remembered, forgetting appointments and so on. This is followed by impaired distant memory, time and place orientation. Cognitive impairment is characterized by decreased ability to acquire new knowledge, use language proficiently, and socialize, inability to speak in complete sentences, decreased spoken language, difficulty finding words, mispronunciation, decreased conversational ability, impaired reading comprehension, miscalculation, incorrect payment, and inability to perform simple calculations. Spatial impairment may include inability to put on a coat, inability to reach into the sleeve, inability to align the corner of the tablecloth with the corner of the table, inability to get lost or not recognize the door of the house, inability to use commonly used objects such as chopsticks and spoons, etc. 2. Late stage manifestations: the patient loses the social graces of the past, such as fidgeting, unkemptness, and poor hygiene. Mental symptoms are prominent, such as depression, indifference, agitation, or euphoria, psychosis with paranoia. Decreased initiative, self-talk, and fear of being left alone. Fragmentary delusions occur, such as suspicion that one’s elderly spouse is having an affair; eccentric behavior, such as suspicion that one’s children are stealing one’s money and possessions, and hiding worthless things as treasures. Severe incontinence, muscle twins, spasms, reticence, bedridden state, etc. can occur. Death often occurs due to malnutrition, bedsores, pneumonia and other physical complications. Is Alzheimer’s disease hereditary? Although the cause of Alzheimer’s disease is still unclear, many scholars believe that genetic factors may be one of the main causes. So far, three genes have been found to be associated with Alzheimer’s disease, located on chromosomes 14, 19 and 21 respectively. Investigations have shown that the risk of Alzheimer’s disease in relatives of patients is higher than that of the general population, and the cumulative risk of Alzheimer’s disease in first-degree relatives of patients living to the age of 90 is 50%. Therefore, the family has patients with Alzheimer’s disease, should cause a high degree of vigilance, to do early prevention and treatment. What is the relationship between neurotransmitter changes and Alzheimer’s disease? The central nervous system relies on neurotransmitters to play a regulatory role, and there are many important neurotransmitters in the nervous system. Studies have shown that acetylcholine plays a special role in cognitive functions such as learning and memory, and that 5-hydroxytryptamine is an important transmitter for maintaining normal intelligence in the brain. In the cerebral cortex and hippocampal sulcus of patients with Alzheimer’s disease, choline acetylase activity and acetylcholinesterase activity are significantly decreased; choline acetylase is the biosynthetic enzyme of acetylcholine, and its decrease indicates acetylcholine deficiency. Insufficient acetylcholine activity is an early abnormal manifestation of Alzheimer’s disease and may be the cause of memory loss in patients. In recent years, it has been found that the 5-hydroxytryptamine system is also severely impaired in patients with Alzheimer’s disease, so that the function of maintaining normal intelligence in the brain is impaired. What factors are associated with Alzheimer’s disease? Factors associated with Alzheimer’s disease include: 1) advancing age; 2) low level of education; 3) low economic level; 4) immune dysfunction; 5) viral infections; 6) history of craniocerebral trauma; 7) widowhood; 8) living alone; 9) depression What are the pathological features of Alzheimer’s disease? The main pathological features of Alzheimer’s disease are: 1) brain atrophy; 2) loss of nerve cells; 3) neurogenic fiber tangles; 4) senile plaques: 5) granular vacuolar degeneration. Can pessimism and anxiety cause Alzheimer’s disease? Due to life, work and other reasons, many friends become negative, pessimistic, anxious and depressed after being hit. A recent study by American scientists shows that people with negative emotions such as pessimism, anxiety and depression may be more prone to dementia than those with positive attitudes.