Thirty years ago, many clinicians considered the disease described by Alois Alzheimer
in 1907 to be a rare, presenile dementing disorder unrelated to the large number of
very elderly persons suffering from “senile dementia.” In 1968, Blessed, Tomlinson,
and Roth published a landmark clinical pathologic correlation study.
1.
They demonstrated that what had been labeled senile dementia in persons in their
eighth, ninth, and tenth decades often was neuropathologically the same disease Dr.
Alzheimer had described in a woman in her fifties. It became clear that most of the
millions of elderly Americans with the insidious onset and gradual progression of
disabling memory loss, other cognitive deficits, behavioral disturbances, global dysfunction,
and impaired ability to perform activities of daily living, would manifest the classic
brain lesions of Alzheimer’s disease (AD)—neuritic plaques, neurofibrillary tangles,
and neuronal loss in hippocampus and neocortex—at neuropathologic examination.To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
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References
- The association between quantitative measures of dementia and of senile change in the cerebral gray matter of elderly subjects.Br J Psychiatry. 1968; 114: 796-811
National Advisory Council on Aging. Report to congress on the scientific opportunities for developing treatments for Alzheimer’s disease. Washington, DC: 1995.
Evans IA, Funkenstein H, Albert MS, et al. Prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease in a community population of older persons. Higher than previously reported. JAMA 262:2551–2556.
Article info
Publication history
Published online: August 16, 2004
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© 1998 Excerpta Medica Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
