Disease
An important criterion of the neuropathological-histological verification of Alzheimer’s disease is the formation of senile plaques. Beta amyloid peptides associated with senile plaques have been found to play a central role in the risk, onset, and progression of Alzheimer's disease as well. Of particular importance is the longer species of beta amyloid known as beta amyloid 42. Elevated levels of beta amyloid, as well as an elevation in the ratio of beta amyloid 42 to the shorter major species of beta amyloid 40, has been identified as important in early events in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's Disease.
Other factors in Alzheimer's disease verification include pathological neurofibrillaries, tangles, and atrophic brain with hydrocephalus. The formation and the distribution of the pathological neurofibrillaries have a regularity and allows one to determine the stage of the disease. In combination with the occurrence of a great number of plaques, Alzheimer’s disease can be diagnosed with high probability. A correlation between the presence of senile plaques and Down Syndrome has also been verified.
Read more about this topic: Senile Plaques
Famous quotes containing the word disease:
“Whoever grows angry amid troubles applies a drug worse than the disease and is a physician unskilled about misfortunes.”
—Sophocles (497–406/5 B.C.)
“Smoking ... is downright dangerous. Most people who smoke will eventually contract a fatal disease and die. But they don’t brag about it, do they? Most people who ski, play professional football or drive race cars, will not die—at least not in the act—and yet they are the ones with the glamorous images, the expensive equipment and the mythic proportions. Why this should be I cannot say, unless it is simply that the average American does not know a daredevil when he sees one.”
—Fran Lebowitz (b. 1950)
“For somehow this disease inheres in tyranny, never to trust one’s friends.”
—Aeschylus (525–456 B.C.)