History of Alzheimer’s disease

Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia, a clinical disorder characterized by a loss of memory and other cognitive abilities.

Alois Alzheimer and Emil Kraepelin are usually seen as the founders of the modern concept of Alzheimer’s disease.

Emil Kraepelin was one of the few 19th century researcher in medicine who recognized the connection between brain pathology and mental dissolution in the elderly. He referred to ‘Morbus Alzheimer’ as early as 1908.

Alzheimer first described the disease that would eventually be named for him at a meeting of the South West German Psychiatrist in Tubingen in 1906.

Neurofibrillary tangles had been detected in brain specimens before Alzheimer described them. Fragnito in 1904, observed neurofibril degeneration and damage in cerebral cortical cells, of brains from patients with senile dementia, and three years later Fuller also described neurofibrillary accumulations in senile dementia.

In Alzheimer 1906 and 1907 papers, he described Auguste D, a 51 year old woman from Frankfurt who had exhibit progressive cognitive impairment, focal symptoms, hallucinations, delusions and psychosocial incompetence.

By the time of her admission to hospital, which she never left, she suffered from weakening of memory, persecution mania, sleeplessness, restlessness had an ‘amnestic writing disorder’ was unable to perform any mental or physical work and was rarely free form fear and agitation.

At postmortems she exhibited arteriosclerosis changes, senile plaques, and neurofibrillary tangles.

Alzheimer described the now familiar distinctive pathology in his original 1907 articles.
History of Alzheimer’s disease