Risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease

Abstract

Alzheimer’s disease is a neurodegenera-tive disorder that leads to brain atrophy and eventually dementia. It is an illness with continuous deterioration of mem-ory and other cognitive functions. The etiology is not yet known, but there are a number of risk factors that increase the likelihood of developing the disease. The aim of our review is to describe the clinically relevant risk factors involved in the progression of Alzheimer’s disease and those factors that are being consid-ered, but still with insufficient evidence for them. In general, risk factors can be divided into modifiable (diabetes, hyper-tension, obesity, dyslipidemia, smoking, alcohol use, head trauma, depression…) and non-modifiable (age, sex, he red-ity or apolipoprotein E gene variants). Greater emphasis is placed on modifiable risk factors that provide scope for further research activities.