Cellular Mechanisms of Alzheimer’s Disease

Abstract

Among those brain insults which result in dementia, particularly in older people, Alzheimer’s disease is the most common. The disease is distinguished by several brain cell changes which include brain cell loss, brain shrinkage, a protein change within neurons known as neurofibrillary degeneration, and a peculiar degenerative change of neuron terminals in which another type of fibrillary material called amyloid may accumulate in the extracellular spaces (Terry, Gonatas, & Weiss, 1964). This latter histopathological change is known as the senile plaque. Although each of these changes may occur in disease other than Alzheimer’s disease, it is the unique combination of histopathological changes which distinguishes this relentlesly progressive, invariably fatal, and untreatable condition from other nervous system disease.