Stem cell therapies and Alzheimer’s Disease
Sameer Khalil
Introduction
Dr Alois Alzheimer, a German psychiatrist, began describing a 56-year-old woman in 1906 with an arcane and mysterious mental disorder. This woman was Auguste Deter, and she was the first ever reported case of what we now know to be Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia. 1 Dementia in the medical world is the ‘collection of symptoms affecting an individual’s abili ty to think and function independently ’ . 2 Alzheimer’s is distinct from other dementias by its unique effect on the parts of the brain that control thought and memory. It is estimated to account for 70 per cent of all cases of dementia. 3 It affects 50 million people worldwide and more than 850,000 in the UK alone. 4 Contemporarily, Alzheimer’s is a disease of increasing global significance in a world with a generali zed phenomenon of population aging; people are now living longer on average (figures 1 and 2). This is because they are surviving heart diseases, strokes, and cancers due to advances in medicine. The deaths from Alzheimer’s disease in the USA continue to increase, unlike heart disease and stroke ( figure 3). The way that deaths are recorded has also changed. If a person dies to dementia, doctors can now report it as the main cause of death. Previously, the immediate cause of death would be listed, such as a fall or immediate infection such as pneumonia. 5 Our knowledge regarding the causes, prognosis, and symptoms of the disease has improved significantly over the last century, with developments in fields of elderly medicine and psychiatry, and discoveries of brain imaging techniques. This means that more people are being diagnosed. There has been significant evidence of prevention strategies which can reduce the risk of people being diagnosed with dementia involving better lifestyle habits such as more frequent exercise. Despite this, even to this day, there is no ‘ magic bullet ’ , no cure to reverse the effects of neurodegeneration that the merciless disease strikes upon the patient. Current treatments have an aim of managing symptoms and improving the patient’s quality of life, incorporating pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatments. Dementia not only devastates lives of the patient, carers, and family supporting, but is an enormous cost to the global economy. In 2015, the global cost of dementia was estimated to be $818 billion, equivalent to 1.1% of global gross domestic product. 6 In the UK alone, the total cost of Alzheimer’s is £23 billion a year but only 0.2% of this is spent on research. 7 Cancer alone gets £1.9 billion a year into research from medical research charity, Cancer Research UK. 8 Various approaches have been trialled and tested to try and find a cure, but to no avail. The disease strips humans of their memories, their autobiography. As cognitive neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga said:
1 Jebelli 2017a: 3. 2 Taylor 2020: 2. 3 Jebelli 2017a: 5. 4 Taylor 2020: 1. 5 The UK’s biggest killer: why are deaths from dementia on the rise? n.d. 6 Duncan 2017. 7 Jebelli 2017a: 233. 8 Sample 2020,
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