Dear friends, with the aging of our society, the number of patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease is increasing year by year. Most of them start their disease at the age of 60~70 years old, with symptoms such as poor memory, personality change and intelligence decline as the main manifestations. However, would you be surprised if these symptoms that should appear in the elderly are seen in some middle-aged people in their 30s~50s, or even young adults? And, with the development of society, this phenomenon is becoming more and more common. Why is it so? Let me answer this question for you. The reason is simple, a microorganism is at fault, it is familiar to us all “syphilis spirochete”. And this disease we call “paralytic dementia”, it belongs to a type of neurosyphilis. When people are infected with syphilis spirochetes at an early stage, they incubate in the body for 10 to 20 years and then develop. It mainly directly invades the nerve tissue and meninges, causing a large number of deformed and necrotic nerve cells, diffuse damage to the cerebral cortex, enlargement of the ventricles, and atrophy of the brain parenchyma. The age of onset is 30~50 years old, and it is more common in men. The disease is mostly insidious and characterized by progressive dementia and neurological signs. Early manifestations include headache, dizziness, anxiety, inattention, nervousness, and forgetfulness. This is followed by personality changes such as fictitiousness, recklessness, poor dressing, mania, euphoria or indifference, and especially by absurd and exaggerated delusions. This is followed by impairment of near-event memory, reduced judgment and calculation, loss of orientation, lack of self-awareness, and progressive dementia. The patient is unable to perform his or her previous job and mostly recuperates at home. The patient is then unable to take care of himself/herself, and cannot eat, dress, bathe, brush his/her teeth, or go to the toilet. In the end, they gradually die. Some patients also have neurological signs such as seizures, tremors, loss of vision, slurred speech and pupils of different sizes. Ataxia, profound sensory disturbances, and other abnormalities may also be present. Laboratory tests are positive for both serum and cerebrospinal fluid syphilis, and CT and MRI examinations suggest brain atrophy and ventricular enlargement. The earlier the disease is treated, the better, mainly with high-dose penicillin to expel syphilis, and symptomatic treatment for combined psychiatric and neurological symptoms. In the future, blood and cerebrospinal fluid are re-examined every 3 or 6 months and followed for more than 2 years. With the progress of society, the number of patients suffering from paralytic dementia is increasing. Since 2002, we have treated nearly 100 patients with suspected neurosyphilis, of which about 70 patients were diagnosed with paralytic dementia. After a period of treatment, they all got better to varying degrees, and some of them were even discharged from the hospital. Friends, if you find that your relatives or friends have a similar phenomenon, do not hesitate to go to a specialized hospital for examination. The disease is insidious, if it can be detected and treated in time, you can get more satisfactory results!