Alzheimer’s 100th anniversary of death and his contribution to a better understanding of senile dementia

Abstract

Initially the trajectory of the historical forerunners and conceptions of senile dementia are briefly presented, being highlighted the name of Alois Alzheimer who provided clinical and neuropathological indicators to differentiate a group of patients with Senile dementia. Alzheimer’s examination of Auguste D’s case, studied by him with Bielschowsky’s silver impregnation technique, permitted to identify a pathological marker, the intraneuronal neurofibrillary tangles, characterizing a new disease later named after him by Kraepelin – Alzheimer’s disease. Over the time this disorder became one of the most important degenerative dementing disease, reaching nowadays a status that may be considered as epidemic.