Alzheimer’s disease is a disease that damages and ultimately destroys brain cells, leading to:
- Memory loss
- Trouble thinking clearly
- Loss of social skills
The condition can also lead to:
- Poor judgment
- Confusion and disorientation
- Changes in personality
- Delusions
- Forgetting how to read or write
When these changes get severe enough to get in the way of day-to-day life, they are known as dementia. Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia, accounting for 3 to 4 out of every 5 people with dementiaΓÇöbut it is not the only cause.
Other conditions that cause dementia include:
- Parkinson’s disease and dementia with Lewy bodies, caused by buildup of a specific protein in the brain
- Genetic conditions such as Huntington’s disease and frontotemporal dementia
- Prion diseases, such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and mad cow disease
- Physical problems inside the brain, such as brain tumors, vascular dementia, and normal pressure hydrocephalus
- Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome, a memory disorder that often affects heavy drinkers
When a person has more than one of these conditions, it is called mixed dementia. Dementia can also be caused by:
- Side effects of medication
- Infections
- Some toxins
- Oxygen shortage in the brain, known as hypoxia
Many types of dementia cannot be cured, although some have treatments that can alleviate symptoms or slow the progression of the disease.┬áAlzheimer’s disease affects more than 5 million Americans, about half of who don’t know they have the condition.┬áOther types of dementia are harder to estimate, but may affect an additional 1.3 to 3.5 million people in the United States.
