Novel Advances in Alzheimer's Disease

Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia in adults, is a progressive degenerative neurological disease that affects memory, cognition, and behavior. Dr. Alois Alzheimer discovered and diagnosed the irreversible disease in 1906 after documenting the famous case of Auguste Deter.1 Since the discovery of the disease, numerous advances have made it possible to not only better understand the causal factors, but also to improve the medical diagnosis and preventative measures that healthcare providers can implement. For the first time since 1984, the National Institute on Aging (NIAA) and the Alzheimer’s Association (AA) proposed and published new diagnostic guideline revisions for Alzheimer’s disease. 3 The complexity of Alzheimer’s makes it difficult to focus on one specific therapeutic target; instead this revision’s aim is to divide the disease into three phases. Furthermore, the NIAA-AA research has documented two types of biomarkers, which can help assist healthcare providers by providing measurable biological changes in patients with Alzheimer’s that can be used to predict cognitive impairment. This research article aims to present the main pathophysiological mechanisms in Alzheimer’s disease, the new diagnostic guideline revisions, and the growing evidence of biochemistry that may cause changes in patients years or even decades before there are manifested clinical symptoms. The momentum is growing with each new research advancement, and the goal to live in a time era with reduced cases of dementia is on the horizon.