INDIVIDUAL

ASSIGNMENT
Medical Neuroscience
1st year / 2d Semester / 2018 / FMUI 2018
Anisa Ayu Maharani
1806174010 – Class C

CAUSES AND RISK FACTORS OF ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE

Introduction

Alzheimer’s disease is one of the causes of dementia among older adults, in

fact it is the most common one. Alzheimer’s is an irreversible disease, it is a
progressive neurological disorder that slowly destroys memory and thinking skills.1

As we know, human brain contains millions of neurons, a specialized cell that

can transmits information via electrical or chemical signals, that connects from one
another to send messages from one part of the brain to the other. In Alzheimer’s
Disease, this communication between neurons are disrupted and leads to loss function
and cell death.2 Alzheimer’s is a neurodegenerative disease, which means that the
brain cell death is progressive and it will happen over time.2

Alzheimer’s was first noticed from a woman who died from an unusual mental
illness. During her life, she shows several symptoms of memory loss, unpredictable
behavior, and language problem. After she died, it is found that there are changes in
the woman’s brain tissue. From the examination of her brain there are many abnormal
clumps which now known as the amyloid plaque and bundles of fibers that is tangled
which are neurofibrillary tangles, this all are recognized by Dr. Alois Alzheimer, from
whom the disease is named after.1
Topic Discussion

In here, I’m going to discuss about the causes and risk factors of Alzheimer’s
disease. Actually, in healthy aging the brain will naturally shrink to some degree
without losing a large numbers of neurons. On the other hand, in Alzheimer’s the
damage is more widespread, there are many neuron that stop functioning, losing
connections with the other, and die eventually.3 The causes of Alzheimer’s disease
that happened in most people is actually haven’t fully understand yet. For some cases,
in early-onset of Alzheimer’s there is a genetic component that takes part, and for late-
onset Alzheimer’s it is often arise from a complex series of brain changes.1

Every person may or may not have the risk to develop Alzheimer’s disease,
and this risk may be different in every person. However, this risk can be increased of
decreased depends on several factors.4 The biggest risk factor to develop Alzheimer’s
disease is age. About 3% of the incidence is happened in persons with age 65 to 74
years old, 18% in persons age 75 to 84 years old, and 47 % in those with age older
than 84 years old.3 Most of Alzheimer’s cases are happened sporadic, but at least 5-
10% of the incidence are familial. Sporadic more often to present in persons with age
50 years and older while an early onset is seen more often with the heritable forms.
From here, we can see that age is an important risk factor of Alzheimer’s. 5

Another risk factors is genetics, it is true that someone with a family that have
Alzheimer’s disease will have a higher risk to develop Alzheimer’s than someone
with no family history. It is identified that in several people there are genes and a
number of regions that associated with the late-onset of Alzheimer’s, one of the genes
is apolipoprotein E gene or APOE, but it doesn’t mean that someone who have the
genes will definitely develop the disease.6

Other than age and genetics, turns out that gender also takes part as one of the
risk factors to develop Alzheimer’s disease. The incidence of Alzheimer’s is higher in
women than in men, it is proven from the fact that 2/3 of persons that diagnosed with
Alzheimer’s disease are women. Considering that age is the greatest risk factor of
Alzheimer’s for women, having a longer life expectancy than men certainly have a
role in here. However, the relation cannot simply attributed to only about the high
longevity of women compared to men. In this regard, there is some theory that said in
young females, the mitochondria are protected against amyloid-beta toxicity which
will generates less reactive oxygen species or ROS, hence releasing less apoptogenic
signals. Even so, as the women grows older the mitochondria lose those advantages
and it makes the women risk to develop Alzheimer’s disease higher.7

Currently, researchers also identified that our race is also takes part as the risk
factor of Alzheimer’s. Though, the correlation between race and the disease itself is
not clear yet. African American is the first race that have the highest risk towards
dementia, followed by American Indian, Latinos, whites, and lastly Asian. When
compared to White people, the risk to develop Alzheimer’s for African American
people is twice.8

The health, environment, and lifestyle of people have the effects towards the
development of Alzheimer’s disease and that’s why it is also considered as the risk
factors of Alzheimer’s. Alzheimer’s often correlated with the cardiovascular disease,
It is shown that several condition associated with the cardiovascular disease
contributes to increase the risk of Alzheimer’s. In relation with that, the increasing
epidemiological studies also shows that diet and nutrition both are an important risk
factors for Alzheimer’s, but these two might be modifiable. There are many nutrients
that can affects the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, such as antioxidants, vitamins, fat, and
carbohydrate. The mechanisms of how these nutrients can affects Alzheimer’s still not
clear, however this nutrients helps to reduce the oxidative stress and amyloid beta-
peptide accumulation, which both considered to have a role in the Alzheimer’s disease
process. Other than that, dietary pattern, which is a combination of food components
can have a various effects on both the cognitive function and Alzheimer’s disease.9
Conclusion

Although Alzheimer’s disease is now become one of the healthcare burdens

due to the progressive aging in the population, but the cure itself is still unknown until
now. That’s why I think it is important for us to know about the causes and risk
factors of Alzheimer’s so that at least we can prevent them to happen.

Someone’s risk to develop Alzheimer’s are influenced by a number of different

aspect which includes age, genetics, gender, race, and also lifestyle. Risk factor is
something that can increases someone chance to develop the disease, but in contrast,
by doing the opposite or at least reducing these factors, we can prevent them. So by
learning about the risk factors of Alzheimer’s disease, I hope it can also favor the
development of its prevention.4

References

1. National Institute on Aging. Alzheimer’s Disease Fact Sheet[Internet]. US:

Department of Health & Human Services; 2016 Aug 17[Cited 2019 April 23].
Available from: https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/alzheimers-disease-fact-sheet
2. National Institute on Aging. What Happens to the Brain in Alzheimer’s
Disease?[Internet]. US: Department of Health & Human Services; 2017 May
16[Cited 2019 April 23]. Available from:
https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/what-happens-brain-alzheimers-disease
3. Kumar V, Abbas AK, Aster JC, Robbins SL, editors. Robbins basic pathology. 9th
ed. Philadelphia, PA: Elsevier; 2013. Page 836.
4. Crous-Bou M, Minguillón C, Gramunt N, Molinuevo JL. Alzheimer's disease
prevention: from risk factors to early intervention. Alzheimers Res Ther. 2017
Sept 12;9(1):71.
5. Guerreiro R, Bras J. The age factor in Alzheimer's disease. Genome Med. 2015
Oct 20;7:106.
6. Tilley L, Morgan K, Kalsheker N. Genetic risk factors in Alzheimer's disease.
Mol Pathol. 1998;51(6):293–304.
7. Vina J, Lloret A. Why women have more Alzheimer's disease than men: gender
and mitochondrial toxicity of amyloid-β peptide. J Alzheimers dis. 2010:
20(s20); s527-33.
8. Anderson NB, Bulatao RA, Cohen B. Critical Perspectives on Racial and Ethnic
Differences in Health in Late Life. Washington; 2004.
9. Hu N, Yu JT, Tan L, Wang YL, Sun L, Tan L. Nutrition and the risk of Alzheimer's
disease. Biomed Res Int. 2013;5(24):820.