Chapter 4-2 Alzheimer's Disease

• Jurisdiction: United States

4-2 Alzheimer's Disease

Although Alzheimer's disease is the most prevalent form of dementia, it is not synonymous with other forms of dementia. As an initial matter, unlike other forms of dementia, Alzheimer's disease is a brain disease that physically attacks the brain itself. Accordingly, the memory loss experienced by the Alzheimer's patient is merely a symptom or function of the brain disease, not the disease itself.

Because Alzheimer's physically attacks the brain, the disease is, in all senses of the word, irreversible. Over the course of its progression, it robs the patient of memory and cognitive skills, and causes him or her to have severe changes in personality and behavior. While the disease itself does not cause death, it causes conditions which will eventually lead to the patient's death. Although some people have lived up to twenty years with the disease, the average post-diagnosis life-span for an Alzheimer's patient is four to eight years.

The disease takes its name from a German physician, Dr. Aloysius Alzheimer. On November 26, 1901, Dr. Alzheimer began treating a 51-year-old woman at the Städtische Anstalt für Irre und Epileptische (Asylum for Lunatics and Epileptics) in Frankfurt. Dr. Alzheimer noticed that the woman, Auguste Deter, suffered from memory loss, progressive deterioration of her cognitive functions, and severe alterations in her personality. She died on April 8, 1906. Following his patient's death, Dr. Alzheimer had her records and brain brought to Munich where he was working at Dr. Emil Kraepelin's lab. Dr. Alzheimer performed an autopsy on Ms. Deter's brain. He noticed many unusual lesions and entanglements therein, lesions and entanglements which resembled those he had seen in older people who had been diagnosed with senile dementia. Dr. Alzheimer named the condition pre-senile dementia.¹⁸ Dr. Kraepelin took the naming one step further: in one of his textbooks, he named the condition "Alzheimer's disease." The name caught on and became so popular that by 1911 the Alzheimer's-Kraepelin description and name of the disease was being used by European physicians to diagnose patients in the United States.¹⁹ Hence, by the time Dr. Alzheimer died in 1915, the disease named after him already had its name. What he did not know was just how significant the disease would become over the next few years.

4-2:1 Causes and Prevalence of Alzheimer's Disease

Notwithstanding the hard work done by Drs. Alzheimer and Kraepelin and the many others who have worked in this field over the years, today, Alzheimer's disease remains the most common form of dementia in people aged 65 or older. This text has already noted that based on updated calculations, the Alzheimer's Association estimates that 6.2 million Americans age 65 and older are living with Alzheimer's dementia in 2021.²⁰ In other words, of the total U.S. population, more than 1 in 9 people (11.3%) age 65 and older has Alzheimer's dementia.²¹ Not only that, but according to the Alzheimer's Association, the percentage of people with Alzheimer's dementia increases with age. Hence, 5.3% of people age 65 to 74, 13.8% of people age 75 to 84, and 34.6% of people age 85 and older have Alzheimer's dementia.²² The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention projects that unless scientists are able to find a cure or somehow slow down the disease's rate of increase, by the year 2060, 13.9 million Americans—nearly 3.3% of the total population in 2060—will be suffering from Alzheimer's disease.²³

4-2:1.1 Prevalence and Incidence of Alzheimer's Disease in Texas

Like the rest of the United States, Texas is experiencing an increase in both the prevalence and incidence of Alzheimer's disease. What do these two terms mean? According to the Alzheimer's Association, the prevalence of Alzheimer's dementia "refers to the number and proportion of people in a given population who have Alzheimer's dementia at a given period in time."²⁴...