Testing for Alzheimer's Disease

Alzheimer's disease is called a brain disease, which manifests itself as a degenerative progressive decline in intelligence, a loss of ability to adequately perceive information, a violation of diction. To date, according to experts, every tenth inhabitant of our planet who crossed the sixty-year boundary - suffers from this disease

Causes

Science still does not know for sure the exact causes of this disease, but scientists tend to believe that the genetic factor plays the main role in the development of the disease. In addition, there are a number of provocative factors: hypertension, severe head trauma, obesity, smoking, poisoning with toxins

Symptoms

Symptomatic of Alzheimer's disease in the early and late stages is different.
Early stage of the disease:
- Loss of ability to recognize familiar objects.
- Anxiety, depression, various emotional disorders.
- Progressive forgetfulness of recent events.
- Complete indifference to events, people and surrounding objects.
Late stage of the disease:
- Loss of ability to recognize people, including even close relatives.
. - The emergence of delusional ideas and hallucinations .
- Loss of abilities for independent movement and thinking.
- In some cases, convulsions of the extremities

Diagnostics

Until now, there is no test that can accurately and immediately accurately diagnose Alzheimer's disease in a patient. Because of this, the doctor first of all must exclude all diseases that have similar symptoms with this disease - infections, trauma, metabolic disorders, overdose of certain medications, anxiety syndromes and depression. Also, an obligatory conversation with relatives of the patient is conducted with the purpose of establishing a complete picture of possible mental disorders

Treatment

Unfortunately, to date, modern medicine is not able to cure this disease, but there is an opportunity to slow its development and weaken symptoms.
Since people suffering from Alzheimer's disease in the brain are deficient in the chemical substance of acetylcholine, the administration of drugs to prevent its further reduction, the so-called inhibitors of acetylcholinesterase, is prescribed. At a later stage of the development of this disease, a memantine is prescribed to the patient, which improves memory and thinking, and also allows the patient to carry out many more simple things - eating, dressing, elementary care of himself. If symptoms such as irritability, anxiety and sleep disturbance are present, antidepressants are prescribed.
Also, in addition to medicamentous, there are alternative therapies:
- Multisensory stimulation, which includes aromatherapy, house therapy, massage and music therapy.
- Cognitive development groups. Special groups are created for patients suffering from Alzheimer's disease who have symptoms of disorientation in reality and memory problems. These groups use a special technique for stimulating memories, exercises for thinking and memory, and also one of the types of multisensory stimulation.

More articles on this topic:

1. Hallucinatory syndrome (hallucinosis)

2. Amnestic (Korsakov) syndrome