Alois Alzheimer (1864-1915), a German psychoneurologist, is commonly known as Alzheimer in Chinese. The original name of Alzheimer’s disease is Alzheimer-KranKheit (also known as Alzheimer’s dementia, Alzheimer’s dementia, and Alzheimer’s disease), which is a kind of dementia with progressive decline of brain function.
On November 26, 1906, at the annual meeting of the German Psychiatric Society in Munich, Germany, Alzheimer first reported the results of his four-year and nine-month observation, treatment, follow-up and study of a 51-year-old female patient with progressive brain decline. In the eighth edition of his textbook on psychiatry, the German psychiatrist Kraepelin gave the name of Alzheimer’s disease to the above-mentioned condition reported by Alzheimer’s.
Alzheimer was born in Germany to a family of lawyers in Markbrecht. After completing primary and secondary school, he entered the medical school of the Royal Friedrich-Wilhelms-University in Berlin in 1883 at the age of 19 and set up his own practice after graduation. After a period of time, he worked as a psychiatrist, director, and professor in hospitals in Frankfurt, Heidelberg, Munich, and Berlin, respectively. Due to physical factors and heavy workload, he suffered from a disease before the age of 50, which gradually led to kidney failure, and he died at the age of 51.
One hundred years ago, German psychoneurologist Alzheimer first reported the progressive decline in brain function, commonly known as Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. Over the past century, as the proportion of the elderly population has increased, the incidence of this disease has continued to rise, and medical doctors have been gradually deepening their research and prevention of the disease …… 901 On November 25, 51-year-old female patient August was admitted to the hospital with a statement from her family that the patient had been experiencing progressive memory and comprehension for 5 years loss of memory and understanding, dysphasia and even confusion, auditory hallucinations, loss of the ability to discern things and directions, paranoia, and refusal of help from family members in daily life.
Dr. Alzheimer, a psychiatrist at the Frankfurt Hospital in Germany, admitted the female patient to the hospital and examined her medically. After repeated symptomatic treatment, her symptoms did not improve but continued to worsen until her death on April 8, 1906. Later, Alzheimer’s performed a pathological examination of the patient’s brain tissue and found extensive atrophy and reduced brain weight. Microscopic examination of pathological sections showed extensive neuronal cell loss, glial cell hyperplasia, neurogenic fiber tangles, and silverophilic stained plaques, mainly in the cerebral cortex and subcortical gray matter. The patient’s symptoms and pathological changes were named as dementia with progressive decline of brain function.
Alzheimer’s disease occurs mostly at the age of 65 or older, and is therefore widely known as senile dementia or senile dementia. If the patient with this disease is younger than 65 years old or younger, it is called early-onset dementia and early-onset dementia. In recent years, some people in society and academia believe that calling patients “dementia” is objectively contemptuous and may create mixed feelings for the patients or their relatives and friends, so they advocate that “dementia” be renamed as “dementia”. Dementia” should be called “dementia”.
Among the various causes of dementia, such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, stroke, sequelae of traumatic brain injury, encephalitis and meningitis, various substance poisoning, endocrine and metabolic disorders, central nervous tumors, long-term malnutrition and anemia, and untreated major depression, Alzheimer’s disease accounts for the highest proportion, according to recent reports, roughly 50% to 65%. Although the causes of Alzheimer’s disease are not yet fully understood by the academic and medical communities, several basic points have been summarized regarding its symptoms and signs. The prodromal and postdrome symptoms include: memory loss or abnormalities, inability to speak normally, decreased comprehension and judgment, inability to operate previously familiar tasks, misplacement of objects, loss of time and space concepts, inability to think about complex matters, obvious personality changes, mood and behavior changes, hallucinations and delusions, indifference and lack of interest in life and the outside world, etc.
The causative factors of Alzheimer’s dementia are relatively clear in academia: low education, failure of brain nerve cells to obtain long-term benign stimulation of complex thinking, periodontal inflammation that may damage the brain, long-term insomnia, lack of physical activity, etc. It is thought that the elderly watching television alone for a long time may also become a cause of dementia over time.
As there is no specific medicine for senile dementia, it is urgent to give active supportive therapy and careful and patient care to all aspects of the patient’s body to improve his or her daily living conditions in order to enhance his or her body’s compensatory capacity and delay the deterioration of his or her symptoms as much as possible.
Because there is no specific treatment for dementia in the elderly, it is more important to take preventive measures.