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Searching for the cause of Alzheimer's disease

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Paul J. Harrison*
Affiliation:
MRC Training Fellow, Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, St Mary's Hospital Medical School, Norfolk Place, London W2 1PG, and Honorary Senior Registrar, Academic Department of Psychiatry, St Mary's Hospital, London W2 1PG
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Becoming demented is something people dread most about growing old; the image of a confused and wandering elderly person is a powerful and distressing one. Alzheimer's disease is the commonest cause of dementia, affecting 500,000 people in Britain alone. It is a progressive and presently incurable brain disease, causing great suffering and imposing an enormous burden on health resources. As a result, a large research effort is under way to find out what causes the disease, since a cure is only likely to emerge once the disease is understood. This research is wide-ranging and diverse, as the complexity of Alzheimer's disease requires many lines of enquiry if the puzzle is to be solved. At one extreme, the research focus is upon large groups of elderly people who are being followed up to see what features predict and herald the onset of dementia. At the other, individual genes, molecules and brain cells are under detailed investigation. Some of the latter studies have given important clues as to the cause of Alzheimer's disease, and these are briefly mentioned here.

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Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1991
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