Alzheimer’s Disease BT - Biomedical Advances in Aging

Abstract

With the evidence that autopsies of demented individuals over the age of 65 demonstrate a predominance of lesions normally associated with Alzheimer’s disease, i.e., neurofibrillary tangles and “senile” (neuritic plaques) (Tomlinson et al., 1968, 1970), the significance of Alzheimer’s disease as a public health problem became evident. The correlation of plaque count with the degree of dementia further established the relationship of this pathologic lesion with clinical manifestations (Blessed et al., 1968). Another interesting and significant correlation was the pathologic evidence that Down’s syndrome individuals over the age of 40 had all the pathologic lesions of Alzheimer’s disease as well as many of the clinical manifestations (Jervis, 1948).