Neurodegenerative diseases, in which neuronal cell disintegrate, bring about deteriorations in cognitive functions as is evidenced in millions of Alzheimer patients. A major neuropeptide, vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP), has been shown to be neuroprotective and to play an important role in the acquisition of learning and memory. A potent lipophilic analogue to VIP now has been synthesized, ...

Associations between Lyme disease and certain neurodegenerative diseases have been proposed, but supportive evidence for an association is lacking. Similar geographic distributions would be expected if 2 conditions were etiologically linked. Thus, we compared the distribution of Lyme disease cases in the United States with the distributions of deaths due to Alzheimer disease, amyotrophic latera...

Cerebral volume loss has long been associated with normal aging, but whether this is due to aging itself or to age-related diseases, including incipient Alzheimer disease, is uncertain. To understand the changes that occur in the aging brain, we examined the cerebral cortex of 27 normal individuals ranging in age from 56 to 103 years. None fulfilled the criteria for the neuropathologic diagnosi...

Alois Alzheimer is best known for his description of neurofibrillary changes in brain neurons of a demented patient, identifying a novel disease, soon named after him by Kraepelin. However, the range of his studies was broad, including vascular brain diseases, published between 1894 and 1902. Alzheimer described the clinical picture of Arteriosclerotic atrophy of the brain, differentiating it f...

INTRODUCTION Epidemiological studies have demonstrated that patients with diabetes mellitus have an increased risk of developing Alzheimer disease, but the relationship between the 2 entities is not clear. DEVELOPMENT Both diseases exhibit similar metabolic abnormalities: disordered glucose metabolism, abnormal insulin receptor signalling and insulin resistance, oxidative stress, and structur...

Alzheimer, a chronic neurodegenerative disease, usually starts slowly and worsens gradually. It causes 60% to 70% of dementia cases. Difficulty in remembering recent events (short-term memory loss) is the most prominent early symptom. As the disease progresses, patients may have problems such as impaired language, disorientation (including easily getting lost), mood swings, loss of motivation, ...