What Really Causes Alzheimer's Disease - Soil and Health Library

USA age-adjusted mortality rates for senile and presenile
dementias also rose rapidly at the same time. The associated
decline in deaths recorded as due to senility could not totally
account for these trends. In conclusion, it is unclear how much
of the recent increase in USA age-adjusted Alzheimer’s disease
death rates have been the result of methodological changes
and how much they have been caused by real growth in the
prevalence of this illness. However, the apparent increase in
mortality from Alzheimer’s disease at specific ages recorded in
the USA 37 is consistent with very similar trends seen in Australia,
38 Canada, 39 England, 40 and Norway 41 where Alzheimer’s
disease death rates also appear to have risen. The best present
answer that can be given truthfully to the question, “Is an 80
year old man or woman in the USA or Europe more likely to
develop Alzheimer’s disease now than they would have been
in 1907 when Alois Alzheimer first identified the disease?” is
“Probably.”
SUMMARY
Studies of the history of Alzheimer’s disease are bedevilled by
problems of identification. Although a wide range of high and
low technology 42-43 has been developed to aid in its diagnosis,
the most definitive way of establishing the presence of this disorder
is still that which was first pointed out by Alois Alzheimer
—extensive brain deposits of amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary
tangles. As a consequence of this difficulty with diagnosis,
and since there are some 70 other types of dementia, it is very
hard to know whether historical references to senile dementia
really referred to Alzheimer’s disease. There is no evidence from
mummies, known to this author, that suggests that they did.
It is almost as difficult to establish whether age-adjusted incidence
and mortality have been rising since 1907, when
21