Probing Plausible Causes of Alzheimer’s disease

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most prevalent form of mental decline and having a damaging effect on the brain. This disease leads to progressive memory loss and inability of speaking, thinking and carrying out day-to-day tasks.

Alzheimer’s is always noted to worsen with passage of time; however the rate of progression would vary in each case. A number of individuals become incapable of performing every day chores early on whereas there are others who would continue doing moderately well till a much advanced staging of the disease.

Causes of Alzheimer’s disease

• Researchers are still not able to totally comprehend what the causes of Alzheimer’s disease actually are, however it is apparent that AD develops due to a composite sequence of events what occur in the brain over protracted spans of time. AD is typified with protein build-up manifesting itself in two ways namely plaques and tangles. Plaque formations are protein beta-amyloid deposits accruing in the gaps in-between nerve cells. Tangles accumulations of the tau protein that occur within the nerve cells. It is still unknown why plaque and tangle formations occur.
• Other likely causes of Alzheimer’s disease are heritable, environmental and lifestyle-related aspects. As heritable constitution and lifestyles vary from individual to individual, hence significance of such aspects for averting or postponing AD too vary in each case. An association has been observed in between grave head injury and imminent surfacing of AD. There has also been a strong association between cardiovascular health and brain health and those not having heart ailments or other associated conditions have lesser likelihood of developing AD as compared to those with heart ailments.
• Genetics don a part in a number of individuals having Alzheimer’s disease. An atypical form of this disease known as early-onset Alzheimer’s disease has been observed to affect individuals in the age group of thirty to sixty years old. A number of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease known as familial Alzheimer’s disease are heritable. Familial Alzheimer’s disease occurs due to mutations or lasting variations in 3 genes. Children in the same generation are believed to be having a fifty-fifty likelihood of getting familial Alzheimer’s disease if either mother or father had it.
• Majority of Alzheimer’s disease cases are late-onset that is observed to develop subsequent to sixty years of age. Though identification of a specific gene being contributory to late-onset AD has not yet been found, heritable aspects do seem to raise an individual’s chances of developing AD.  This heightened risk has been associated with the apoliprotein E (APOE) gene that has numerous types, one of which is APOE ε4 gene occurring in nearly forty percent of all cases developing late-onset Alzheimer’s disease. But, minimum 1/3rd of individuals having AD have no presence of this type of the gene. Nearly 4-7 other AD risk-factor genes could most likely be present among which SORL1 was identified three years ago.

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