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Alzheimer 's Disease : A Progressive Degenerative Disease

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Introduction Alzheimer 's disease (AD) is a progressive degenerative disease of the brain from which there is no recovery. There are three brain abnormalities that are the hallmarks of the Alzheimer’s disease is initially caused by plaques buildup in the brain’s neurons as illustrated in figure 1. The support structure that allows the flow of the nutrients through the neurons gets damaged and ultimately there is loss of connection among the neurons and they die off (National Institute of Health, 2015). This causes the brain tissue to shrinks, which is called atrophies. All this ultimately lead the victim of this disease to face difficulties in governing emotions, recognize errors and patterns, coordinate movement, and remember. Ultimately, a person with AD loses all memory and mental functioning. On November 26th 1901, Alois Alzheimer, an assistant physician at the psychiatric institution in Frankfurt met Auguste D, aged 51 (Berrios , 2004). After talking to her and carrying out the preliminary diagnostics, the physicist realized during talking to her that his patient was giving different answers to the same questions. She also often stopped mid-sentence as if she had forgotten what she was going to say. She seemed confused and anxious. When she died, Alzheimer received her brain for analysis. When he was inspecting the brain, he came to notice the neurons had thick, strongly staining fibrils. Moreover, the cortex was full of plaques of unknown composition. Auguste D’s brain

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