A protective mutation against Alzheimer disease?

Abstract

To date, nearly 35.6 million people world wide live with dementia, and the situation is going to get worse by 2050 with 115.4 million cases.¹ In the western world, the prevalence for dementia in people over the age of 60 is greater than 5% and two thirds are due to Alzheimer disease,^2-5 the most common form of dementias.

 

Alzheimer disease (AD), first described as “presenile dementia” by the German psychiatrist and neuropathologist Alois Alzheimer in 1906,⁶ is a devastating disease characterized by progressive cognitive deterioration, as well as impairments in behavior, language, and visuospatial skills.⁷ Furthermore, Alzheimer discovered the presence of intraneuronal tangles and extracellular amyloid plaques in the diseased-damaged brain, the hallmarks of Alzheimer disease.

Keywords::

• Alzheimer disease
• β-secretase
• amyloid precursor protein (APP)
• BACE1
• amyloid beta (Aβ)

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