Alzheimer's disease: A study of epidemiological aspects

Abstract

A case-control study was performed to determine the possible roles of various environmental factors, prior illnesses, drug use, and personal habits in the development of Alzheimer's disease. Such information was collected from 40 patients with onset of dementia prior to age 70 and from 80 community control subjects matched for age, sex, and race. No significant differences were found between patients and control subjects in toxic environmental exposures, animal contacts, smoking, drinking, or unusual dietary habits. A significantly higher frequency of prior thyroid disease was found in women patients than in women control subjects (25.0% and 7.1%, respectively). A history of severe head injury was also obtained significantly more often among the patients than among the controls (15.0% and 3.8%, respectively). Aside from these differences, which may prove to be important associative factors in this illness, there appeared to be no major premorbid demographic or clinical factors associated with this form of dementia. There was evidence, however, of a genetic factor that was manifested in an excess of dementia and mental retardation (including Down's syndrome) in families of patients with Alzheimer's disease.

NMDA Receptor Activation Inhibits α-Secretase and Promotes Neuronal Amyloid-β Production

“…Traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) have been identified as an environmental risk factor for Alzheimer's disease (AD) (Heyman et al, 1984;Mortimer et al, 1991;Guo et al, 2000;Plassman et al, 2000;Uryu et al, 2002;Fleminger et al, 2003), an age-related neurodegenerative disease associated with progressive decline of cognitive function. One of the pathological hallmarks of AD is the abnormal accumulation of amyloid-␤ (A␤) (a 40 -42 amino acid-long peptide) within vascular walls and in the cerebral parenchyma (Glenner and Wong, 1984;Masters et al, 1985).…”

Preliminary evidence that estrogen protects against age-related hippocampal atrophy

“…A number of studies have examined cognitive performance, particularly memory performance, in postmenopausal women, and have reported a beneficial effect of ERT [29,31,[46][47][48]. While there are some conflicting findings, especially with regard to the use of estrogen for the treatment of AD, a growing body of evidence indicates that ERT reduces the risk of AD in postmenopausal women [1,2,5,7,21,23,32,41,56].…”

Sintomas parkinsonianos, cerebelares, psicóticos e demenciais em ex-pugilista: relato de caso

“…Estudos epidemiológicos têm relacionado traumas cerebrais ao desenvolvimento futuro da doença de Alzheimer [18][19][20][21][22] . Roberts et al 23 , reexaminando material de Corsellis et al 5 utilizando métodos imunocitoquímicos, identificaram acúmulo de beta-proteína no cérebro de expugilistas.…”