A 19-year-old teenager from China has been diagnosed with “probable” Alzheimer's disease, after having memory problems since the age of 17. If the diagnosis is correct, he will be the youngest person ever to be recorded with the disease.
If you're like most people, you picture an elderly person in the later stages of dementia. But here's the thing—dementia doesn't just happen to older people. While age is still the biggest risk factor for dementia, people in their 50s and 40s (and even 30s and 20s) can also develop dementia.
In some instances, dementia symptoms can appear in the youngest of children and babies and progress quickly. While for other children like Angelina, symptoms may not start until they are teenagers. All children with dementia, however, face one common challenge: childhood dementia is progressive.
Young-onset (also called early-onset) Alzheimer's is an uncommon form of dementia that affects people younger than age 65. About 5% to 6% of people with Alzheimer's disease develop symptoms before age 65.
People live for an average of 8 years after their symptoms appear. But the disease can progress quickly in some people and slowly in others. Some people live as long as 20 years with the disease.
Results The median survival time following a diagnosis of AD depended strongly on the patient's age at diagnosis. The median survival times ranged from 8.3 years for persons diagnosed as having AD at age 65 years to 3.4 years for persons diagnosed as having AD at age 90 years.
People often live for years with dementia. While it can be difficult to think of these diseases as terminal, they do eventually lead to death.
The causes probably include a combination of age-related changes in the brain, along with genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors.
Alzheimer's disease is a progressive disease that gradually worsens over a period of four to 20 years.
Forgetfulness can arise from stress, depression, lack of sleep or thyroid problems. Other causes include side effects from certain medicines, an unhealthy diet or not having enough fluids in your body (dehydration). Taking care of these underlying causes may help resolve your memory problems.
The Mini-Cog test.
A third test, known as the Mini-Cog, takes 2 to 4 minutes to administer and involves asking patients to recall three words after drawing a picture of a clock. If a patient shows no difficulties recalling the words, it is inferred that he or she does not have dementia.
Administration: The examiner reads a list of 5 words at a rate of one per second, giving the following instructions: “This is a memory test. I am going to read a list of words that you will have to remember now and later on. Listen carefully. When I am through, tell me as many words as you can remember.
Changes within the tissues of the brain slowly destroy vital connections between different regions of the brain, and between the brain and the body. The result is that Alzheimer's disease is one of the top 10 causes of death in American adults.
In most cases, Alzheimer's does not have a single genetic cause. Instead, it can be influenced by multiple genes in combination with lifestyle and environmental factors. Consequently, a person may carry more than one gene or group of genes that can either increase or reduce the risk of Alzheimer's.
The current evidence indicates that while chronic stress may play a role in the development or progression of dementia, it does not necessarily cause dementia.
On average, a person with Alzheimer's lives four to eight years after diagnosis, but can live as long as 20 years, depending on other factors.
2. Can Alzheimer's disease be inherited? In the vast majority of cases (more than 99 in 100), Alzheimer's disease is not inherited. The most important risk factor for Alzheimer's disease is age.
The average life expectancy figures for the most common types of dementia are as follows: Alzheimer's disease – around eight to 10 years. Life expectancy is less if the person is diagnosed in their 80s or 90s. A few people with Alzheimer's live for longer, sometimes for 15 or even 20 years.
Age is the biggest risk factor for Alzheimer's, as it is for most types of dementia. This means that a person is more likely to get Alzheimer's as they get older. Above the age of 65, a person's risk of developing Alzheimer's doubles about every five years.
Alzheimer's disease starts in the brain many years before symptoms start to show. Early symptoms are mild and so don't stop someone doing their normal everyday activities. It's only later that symptoms become severe enough to be called 'dementia'.
You might be surprised to learn that some people are actually not aware that they have Alzheimer's. People with Alzheimer's, dementia, brain tumor, stroke, and other types of damage in the brain are cognitively impaired and because of that, might not believe anything is wrong with them.
In stage 6 of dementia, a person may start forgetting the names of close loved ones and have little memory of recent events.
Some of the world's lowest dementia rates are found in Amazonian indigenous groups. As scientists around the world seek solutions for Alzheimer's disease, a new study reveals that two indigenous groups in the Bolivian Amazon have among the lowest rates of dementia in the world.