Memory loss is NOT a normal part of ageing, say dementia experts
December 13, 2010 British author and philosopher Iris Murdoch suffered from Alzheimer's disease from 1995 and died in 1999. Scientists have shown the same lesions in the brain responsible for earlier memory lapses play a part in dementia.
Mild memory lapses experienced by older people are often excused as 'senior moments,' but a new study has found the brain changes that cause the forgetfulness are also responsible for dementia.
The findings contradict a long-held notion that memory loss is a normal part of ageing, the U.S. team said.
'We don't think that just because you are old, a problem in thinking and memory is normal and should be ignored. We think it's an actual sign of disease,' said lead researcher Dr Robert Wilson, at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.
Alzheimer's, the most common form of dementia, is a fatal brain disease in which people gradually lose their memory and their ability to reason and care for themselves.
One famous sufferer was author and philosopher Iris Murdoch, who succumbed to the disease in 1999.
Only an autopsy can confirm the brain changes used to diagnose Alzheimer's disease. Short of that, most patients have to take a battery of memory tests administered by specialists.
Dr Wilson's findings are the latest from a long-running study of 350 Catholic nuns, priests and brothers who were given memory tests each year for up to 13 years.
When they died, their brains were examined. Pathologists looked specifically for tau, a toxic protein that forms tangles in the brain linked with Alzheimer's disease.
They also checked for evidence of strokes and for Lewy bodies - an abnormal protein in nerve cells that can cause a form of dementia called Lewy body disease.
Patients who showed no sign of memory loss also had clean brains. In the patients with memory troubles, they tended to develop gradually, but then accelerated in the last four to five years of life.
'What we're saying is the brain changes that are mainly responsible for Alzheimer's and other dementias also seem to be mainly responsible for very mild early changes in memory and thinking,' Dr Wilson said.
Many experts believe Alzheimer's starts about 10 years before the disease is diagnosed. Professor Wilson said his findings, which appear in the journal Neurology, lend more credence to that theory.
In England alone, there are currently 570,000 people living with dementia. That number is expected to double over the next 30 years.
Researchers are working on new ways to diagnose dementia based on protein biomarkers in blood and spinal fluids, or new imaging agents, in the hopes of developing new drugs that can keep the disease from progressing.
