Doença de Alzheimer

Abstract

The authors initially point out the increasingly importance of degenerative diseases due to progressive world population aging, among them, the demential syndrome relating that Alzheimer disease (AD) is the most common dementia. Following, they show the AD and other dementias epidemiologic data establishing the diagnostic criteria of AD possible, probable or definitive. The clinical picture is complex and presented in details, as the diagnostic is based on symptoms and siguals due to a laboratory marker absence. The differential diagnosis must be done with depression, psychiatric syndromes, delirium, amnesia and cognitive decline associated with age. Further, the authors show the instruments for cognitive evaluation. The DA treatment is presented having as the pathophysiologic basis the acetilcholine (AC) defficiency, presenting the drugs that inhibits the enzyme acetilcholinosterase (AchEl), the selective and the non-selective. Among the selective AchEl there are the donepezil and galantamine and among the non-selective AchEl there are tacrine, physostigmine rivastigmine and also metriphonate.