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Unanswered Questions About Alzheimer's Disease

November is National Alzheimer's Disease Awareness Month. To shed light on the condition, the Alzheimer's Association has prepared two new resources for the more than 5 million Americans living with the disease and their 10 million family caregivers. However, despite the many resources available and the research under way to study the condition, many unanswered questions still exist about Alzheimer's disease.

  1. Description of Alzheimer's

    • Alzheimer's disease is a form of dementia caused by the degeneration of healthy brain tissue and resulting in severe memory loss and declining mental functions. According to the Alzheimer's Association, the disease is the seventh-leading cause of death in the United States. In addition to memory loss, symptoms of the disease include disorientation, personality changes and difficulty with abstract thinking and verbal skills, as well as performing what may have at one point been simple tasks, according to the Mayo Clinic.

    Cure for Alzheimer's

    • One commonly asked question about Alzheimer's disease is whether there is any cure for the condition. There is currently no cure, although there are treatments that may improve the quality of life for some patients with the disease. According to the Mayo Clinic, cholinesterase inhibitors and Memantine seem to slow the decline of mental facilities in patients. Different drugs would be prescribed depending on the stage of the disease.

    Causes of Alzheimer's

    • Another question frequently asked is what causes Alzheimer's disease. According to the Mayo Clinic, although the medical community believes that the condition may be caused by a combination of lifestyle and genetic factors, there doesn't appear to be any one cause for the condition. As the Alzheimer's Association points out, the medical community has yet to determine a reason for why brain cells in Alzheimer's patients fail. In addition, no one test determines whether a patient has the disease, thus making it even more difficult for scientists to figure out the exact cause. Although doctors are able to diagnose Alzheimer's in patients 90 percent of the time, the disease can only be diagnosed with 100 percent accuracy after the patient's death, when a scan highlights plaques in the brain.

    Amyloid Plaques

    • Another unanswered question concerning Alzheimer's disease is whether and how amyloids damage neurons in the brains of patients with the disease. Researchers at Mass General Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease studied how deposits similar to the amyloid buildup in the brains of mice, discovering that they grow at a steady pace and that they may prove useful in determining the effectiveness of those treatments meant to inhibit the growth of plaque in the brain.

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