Dementia
Introduction to Dementia
A woman in her early 50s was admitted to a hospital because of increasingly
odd behavior. Her family reported that she had been showing memory problems and
strong feelings of jealousy. She also had become disoriented at home and was
hiding objects. During a doctor's examination, the woman was unable to remember
her husband's name, the year, or how long she had been at the hospital. She
could read but did not seem to understand what she read, and she stressed the
words in an unusual way. She sometimes became agitated and seemed to have
hallucinations and irrational fears.
This woman, known as Auguste D., was the first person reported to have the
disease now known as Alzheimer's disease * (AD) after Alois Alzheimer, the
German doctor who first described it. After Auguste D. died in 1906, doctors
examined her brain and found that it appeared shrunken and contained several
unusual features, including strange clumps of protein called plaques and tangled
fibers inside the nerve cells. Memory impairments and other symptoms of
dementia, which means "deprived of mind," had been described in older adults
since ancient times. However, because Auguste D. began to show symptoms at a
relatively early age, doctors did not think her disease could be related to what
was then called "senile dementia. "The word senile is derived from a Latin term
that means, roughly, "old age."
It is now clear that AD is a major cause of dementia in elderly people as
well as in relatively young adults. Furthermore, we know that it is only one of
many disorders that can lead to dementia. The U. S. Congress Office of
Technology Assessment estimates that as many as 6.8 million people in the United
States have dementia, and at least 1.8 million of those are severely affected.
Studies in some communities have found that almost half of all people age 85 and
older have some form of dementia. Although it is common in very elderly
individuals, dementia is not a normal part of the aging process. Many people
live into their 90s and even 100s without any symptoms of dementia.
Besides senile dementia, other terms often used to describe dementia include
senility and organic brain syndrome. Senility and senile dementia are outdated
terms that reflect the formerly widespread belief that dementia was a normal
part of aging. Organic brain syndrome is a general term that refers to physical
disorders (not psychiatric in origin) that impair mental functions.
Research in the last 30 years has led to a greatly improved understanding of
what dementia is, who gets it, and how it develops and affects the brain. This
work is beginning to pay off with better diagnostic techniques, improved
treatments, and even potential ways of preventing these diseases.
Next: What Is Dementia? »
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