What is Alzheimer’s disease?

  Alzheimer’s disease, also known as dementia, is a degenerative disease of the central nervous system characterized by progressive cognitive dysfunction and behavioral impairment, most often occurring in old age and pre-morbidities.  Alzheimer’s disease usually starts insidiously and continues to develop progressively, mainly manifesting as cognitive decline and psychiatric symptoms, and its course includes two stages: pre-dementia and dementia.  The pre-dementia stage is usually asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic, with mild memory loss and mild impairment of learning, attention, language, and executive skills, but generally does not affect daily life.  Patients in the dementia stage will have decreased ability in daily life and are divided into three stages: (1) Mild dementia: The main manifestation is memory impairment. First, there will be diminished memory of recent events, characterized by frequent forgetting of recent events, inability to remember what just happened and what was just said, and clear memory of things that happened long ago, and as the disease progresses, there can be diminished distant memory as well. This stage is often neglected, but it will gradually affect the normal life of patients, such as forgetting to turn off the gas, often not being able to find things, etc. Some patients also appear to be unable to find their way home after going out, and unable to accurately copy stereograms.  (2) Moderate dementia: In addition to memory impairment, the patient’s ability to work, learn, and interact with others also decreases, and the previously acquired knowledge and skills also begin to deteriorate. At this time, patients often have obvious mental and behavioral abnormalities.  (3) Severe dementia: In addition to the aggravation of the above symptoms, patients may experience emotional indifference, loss of speech, inability to dress and eat, bed-ridden, no communication, paralysis of limbs, incontinence of urine and stool, etc. Complications such as lung infections, urinary tract infections, pressure sores, systemic failure, etc. may occur, and eventually death may occur due to complications.  Currently, the clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease is generally based on the patient’s medical history, clinical symptoms, psychiatric scale examination and imaging examinations especially MRI and PET. Therefore, Alzheimer’s disease, which is harmful and the current treatment methods are not yet effective in curbing the progress of Alzheimer’s disease, patients will gradually progress and eventually die mostly due to complications.