Alzheimer's disease: overview, risk factors and prevention

Alzheimer's disease is a degenerative dementia which is characterized by a progressive onset, a gradual decline of memory and at least one among the following disturbances (aphasia, apraxia, agnosia, executive functions disturbances). The disease cannot be explained by other neurologic or general conditions. Diagnosis is established according to international standardized criteria after a clinical and neuropsychological examination, biological, neuroimaging with CT scan and MRI investigations. Alzheimer's disease should be diagnosed at early stages of the disease in order to implement the caring of the patient and optimize the possibility to delay the disease. Several individual and environnemental risk factors have been identified. A better knowledge in these risk factors will enable us to have a better understanding of the pathophysiological mechanisms and a better prevention of the disease. The treatment is currently symptomatic but research in this field is currently promising.