and due to the fact that the population as a whole will age, by the middle of the 21st century, that number might reach 14 million. Rarely does AD strike people in their 40s or 50s, and when it does it is considered to be a subdivision called early-onset AD. Elderly people age 65 or older is the class most often effected by Alzheimer's Disease. Three percent of all people age 65 to 74 have Alzheimer's. Nineteen percent of those between the ages of 75 and 84 are affected, and for those over age 85 forty-seven percent are affected. The average cost of caring for someone with Alzheimer's Disease is considerable, and is approximately $174,000 per person over the course of the disease. This figure is for those persons who can be cared for at home by a friend or family member. If the condition is bad enough and the person's caregiver has to seek outside help, such as a nursing home, the cost rises. (Robinson, 1999)By reading all of these startling facts one may wonder what causes such a horrible disease. In the year of 1906, Dr. Alois Alzheimer, the man in which the disease is named after, conducted an autopsy on a woman who died from an unusual mental illness. His findings showed changes in the women's brain tissues. He found abnormal deposits, now called senile plaques, and tangled bundles of nerve fibers, now called neurofibrillary tangles (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1993). Senile plaques are simply chemical deposits that contain degenerating nerve cells along with a protein called beta amyloid, and neurofibrillary tangles are malfunctions in nerve cells caused by twisted masses of protein fibers. These two abnormal structures are common between autopsies done on patients with Alzheimer's symptoms. It is not clear how these cause problems, but presumably they interfere with the communication between nerve cells. This interference causes a person not to be able to respond normally to a message being sent to ...
