Original title: Current understanding of Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis and treatment
Alzheimer’s is a brain disease linked to two changes: amyloid plaques and tau tangles. Doctors diagnose it by assessing a person’s symptoms against clinical criteria and using clues from body fluids and brain scans. Current treatment aims to ease symptoms. Researchers are also testing treatments intended to reduce the brain changes linked to the disease.
Imagine trying to work out why a room is getting harder to use. You ask the people who live there what has changed, then check for clues in places they cannot see. In this paper, the accounts are a person’s symptoms, and the hidden clues are signs found in body fluids and brain scans; together, they help doctors assess Alzheimer’s.
Alzheimer’s is the most common cause of dementia worldwide, and its prevalence is growing partly as populations age. Knowing how diagnosis and treatment are currently approached matters to people with memory problems, their families, and clinicians making care decisions.
The abstract does not give specific diagnostic criteria, describe particular treatments, or report results from clinical trials. It presents an overview of current understanding and notes that trials aimed at reducing brain pathology are still in progress.
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Current understanding of Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis and treatment — Jason L. Weller, Andrew E. Budson — F1000Research — doi:10.12688/f1000research.14506.1
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper.