Alzheimer’s Disease was first diagnosed in 1906 when Dr. Alois Alzheimer analyzed the brain tissue of a deceased patient. She had been his patient since 1901 with an ‘unusual’ mental illness, and her symptoms were memory loss, and language and behavior issues. Dr. Alzheimer discovered sticky plaques and tangles in her brain.
Dr. Samuel Cohen, Research Fellow in Biophysical Chemistry at St. John’s College and the Center for Misfolding Diseases in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, reminds us that medicine could not treat the first Alzheimer’s patient any better today than when she was stricken with it over 100 years ago. More than 40 million people worldwide now suffer from it and it is expected to grow to one-in-two people in the coming years.
But, there’s finally HOPE that it will be cured over the next 10-20 years. Alzheimer’s is finally being recognized as an illness, a disease, rather than as a part of the aging process. Watch this uplifting Ted Talk by Dr. Cohen.