Team:UCL/Background/Alzheimers

WHAT IS ALZHEIMER'S?

Dementia

Dementia is an age related neurodegenerative condition, characterised by failure of recent memory and intellectual functions (attention, language, visual-spatial orientation, abstract thinking, judgement), and tends to progress steadily (Weintraub et al. 2012). These changes are due to the mounting dysfunction and death of brain cells, called neurons, which are responsible for the storage and computation of information. Late stages of the disease often see patients bedridden, mute and incontinent. Although some drugs can temporarily improve memory, pharmaceutical research, through enlightening, has been clinically unsuccessful. At present there are no treatments that can halt, let alone revert, the inexorable progression of dementia. The treatments that do exist are purely symptomatic (Citron 2010).