Review article

Early Diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease

Fran Borovečki

Abstract

Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive degenerative disorder of the central nervous system, and the most common cause of dementia in people over 65 years of age, as well as the most common neurodegenerative disease. Alzheimer’s disease is characterized by the extracellular accumulation of β-amyloid in the brain, as well as the accumulation of neurofibrillary tangles in neurons. Biochemical processes involved in the development of Alzheimer’s disease ultimately lead to widespread cell death and neuronal loss through apoptosis. Modern clinical work-up of patients with Alzheimer’s disease significantly improved the possibility of timely diagnosis. Clinical work-up includes a whole range of clinical and diagnostic procedures such as structural, functional and molecular neuroimaging, neurocognitive testing, neurophysiological methods, genetic analysis and cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers. Despite the previous understanding that the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease can only be made by a postmortem examination, today’s diagnostic guidelines allow the diagnosis with specificity and sensitivity of more than 90%. The aforementioned progress in diagnostic algorithms also enabled early diagnosis thus allowing the development and timely administration of neuroprotective therapies.

Keywords

Alzheimer’s disease; neuroimaging methods; biomarkers; neuroprotective therapy

Hrčak ID:

216808

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/216808

Publication date:

6.2.2019.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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