Alzheimer’s disease is a degenerative disease of the central nervous system characterized by progressive cognitive dysfunction and behavioral impairment that occurs in old age and pre-mature old age.
In China, the prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease is about 3% to 7% among people over 65 years old. Risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease include low education, smoking, lower estrogen levels in women, high blood sugar, high cholesterol, and high homocysteine, among others. Alzheimer’s disease usually starts insidiously and continues to develop progressively, mainly manifesting as cognitive decline and psychiatric symptoms.
The pre-dementia stage is usually asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic, with mild impairment of near memory and mild impairment of learning, attention, language, and executive skills, but generally does not affect the ability to perform daily tasks.
Patients in the dementia stage will have a decrease in daily living ability, which is further divided into three stages: (1) Mild dementia, mainly manifested as memory impairment, will first appear as diminished near memory, characterized by frequent forgetting of recent events, inability to remember what just happened or what was just said, and clear memory of things that have been said for a long time, and as the disease progresses, diminished distant memory can gradually appear. This stage is often ignored or just considered as the elderly forgetting things, but it will gradually affect the normal life of patients, such as forgetting to turn off the gas, often unable to find things, etc. Some patients will develop visual-spatial impairment, which is commonly known as not being able to find the way home after going out and not being able to accurately copy three-dimensional drawings.
(2) Moderate dementia, in addition to memory impairment continues to worsen, the ability to work, learn, and interact with others decreases, and the knowledge and skills previously acquired also begin to deteriorate, with obvious visual-spatial impairment, such as not being able to find their room at home. At this time, patients often have obvious mental and behavioral abnormalities. Patients with an introverted personality become irritable, excited, and talk more, while patients with an extroverted personality may become silent and uninterested, or even have personality changes and do things that lose their sense of shame, such as urinating and defecating anywhere like children.
(3) In severe dementia, in addition to the above-mentioned symptoms, there will be emotional indifference, loss of speech, inability to dress and eat, bed-ridden, no communication, paralysis of limbs, incontinence of urine and feces, etc. Complications such as lung infections, urinary tract infections, pressure sores, systemic failure, etc. will occur, and eventually death will occur due to complications.
Currently, the clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease is generally based on the patient’s detailed medical history, clinical symptoms, and psychiatric scale examination, and the accuracy of the diagnosis can reach 85% to 90%. Some auxiliary tests, such as EEG and head imaging, are also available, but they lack specificity.
Therefore, Alzheimer’s disease, the danger is huge, and the current treatment methods are not yet effective in curbing the progress of Alzheimer’s disease. Even if treatment is given, the patient’s disease will still progress gradually, usually for 5 to 10 years, and a few patients can survive for 10 to 20 years or more, and eventually die mostly from complications. Therefore, it is still very important for everyone to pay attention to this disease, early detection and early treatment to slow down the quality of daily life of patients.