Alzheimer's Disease and Cognitive Decline in the Elderly
This literature review concerning the topic of Alzheimer's disease and cognitive decline in the elderly addresses the following relevant areas: overview of dementia in the elderly; theories of Alzheimer's disease and cognitive decline; cognitive decline in Alzheimer's disease; predictors of Alzheimer's and cognitive decline; risk factors for cognitive decline; treatment of cognitive decline in Alzheimer's disease; and summary and conclusions.
Dementia is a term that is applied to individuals over the age of 65 years to indicate the presence of significant cognitive impairment such as is found in Alzheimer's disease (Epstein & Connor, 1999). This cognitive impairment is defined as a loss of the ability to care for the self and it is associated with numerous factors and problems. The most common term associated with dementia in the elderly is Alzheimer's disease, which is the classification for more than 50% of the dementia cases in the elderly. This dementia is distinguished from dementia due to vascular disease, which is found in up to 20% of the elderly dementia cases. The remaining cases are due to conditions such as normal pressure hydrocephalus, Pick's disease, brain tumors, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, nutritional deficiencies, and Diffe Lewy Bogy disease (Epstein & Connor, 1999).
Alzheimer's disease was named after Alois Alzheimer, who in 1907 examined the brain of a women who had suffered from dementia prior to death. The brain had multiple plaque-like structures in different regions of the brain and some of the neurons had tangled filaments. These findings are known as plaques and tangles, and these represent the pathological changes found in Alzheimer's disease. The protein, amyloid, is abundantly found in plaques and this is thought to be toxic to neurons, which may result in Alzheimer's, though the mechanism has not been identified. Plaques and tangl...