The Memory Hole

NY Times ^ | November 3, 2006 | DAVID SHENK

[neverdem]

ONE hundred years ago today, a 42-year-old German psychiatrist and neuropathologist named Alois Alzheimer shocked colleagues with his description of one woman’s autopsied brain.

The woman was named Auguste Deter. Five years earlier, her husband had admitted her to Alzheimer’s psychiatric hospital in Frankfurt with a disturbing set of symptoms: memory trouble, aphasia (loss of the ability to use words), confusion, bursts of anger and paranoia. She had become a danger to herself in the kitchen and needed constant care.

Alzheimer found his new patient sitting on a bed with a helpless expression.

“What is your name?” he asked.

“Auguste,” she replied.

“Last name?”

“Auguste.”

“What is your husband’s name?”

“Auguste, I think.”

“How long have you been here?”

(She seems to be trying to remember, he wrote in his notes.)

“Three weeks.”

It was her second day in the hospital. “I have lost myself,” she told her doctor. Over the next four and a half years, she grew increasingly disoriented, delusional and incoherent. She would scream for hours on end. Eventually, Auguste Deter became bedridden, incontinent and largely immobile, and then, in April 1906, at age 55, she died.

What was this strange disease that would take an otherwise healthy middle-aged woman and slowly — very slowly, as measured against most disease models — peel away, layer by layer, her ability to remember, to communicate her thoughts and finally to understand the world around her?

It looked like senile dementia...

--snip--

(The Nissl method, by the way, is still in use. Nissl, a friend and close collaborator of Alzheimer, became a medical school legend with his instructions on how to time the staining process: Take the brain out, he advised. Put it on the desk. Spit on the floor. When the spit is dry, put the brain in alcohol.)

[kinoxi]

Paradoxically, we have created a civilization of such health and longevity that a disease that was once rare now threatens us all.

Tragic disease, definitely underfunded in research.

[doesnt suffer fools gladly]

The long goodbye. It's a heartbreaking disease.

[lafroste]

My Grandmother died at 96 and was unable to remember nearly anything. She asked me if my 1 YO son was her baby Willie (my father). My father took me aside one night and tried to make me promise to shoot him if he ever became like his mother.

My father died of cancer, and I believe he preferred that end to that of his mother.

[elhombrelibre]

It's also what the MSM has regarding Democrats' pre-Iraq war statements on WMD in Iraq.

[Prost1]

A terrible disease.
I was looking for the Russia-German village reference.
It is Lauwe or Jost along the Volga. The people from one or both villages have the highest incidences of heriditary alzheimer's.

Other Info:
Russia-German family links
http://www.accessexcellence.org/WN/SUA06/alz895.html

and
http://www.rudramani.com/alzheimer/alzheimers-foundation-island-long.html
1468. Fresno Bee, The (CA) - September 1, 1995

ALZHEIMER'S GENE FOUND IN GERMAN-RUSSIAN DESCENDANTS * RESEARCHERS, INCLUDING A REEDLEY NATIVE, TRACEMUTATION IN VICTIMS TO A COMMON ANCESTOR WHO MIGRATED FROM GERMANY TO VOLGA RIVER ABOUT 200 YEARS AGO.
Somewhere in Germany 200 years ago, an immigrant followed other Germans and Catherine the Great to Russia, settling along the Volga River.The immigrant probably died of Alzheimer's disease. In the time since, the descendants of that German have had one thing in common, a mutated gene that predisposes them to Alzheimer's disease before age 65 in generation after generation.It was a fascinating piece of research by scientists at the University of Washington and...

and
http://www.medhelp.org/NIHlib/GF-62.html
Genes in early-onset Alzheimer's disease.
Two families in Belgium can count back six or seven generations in which some members developed Alzheimer's disease in their 30's and 40's. A Japanese family has 5 members who developed the disease in middle age; a Hispanic family has 12 members; a French-Canadian family, 23; a British family, 8. In families descended from Volga Germans--a group of German families that settled in the Volga River valley in Russia in the 1800s--dozens of descendants have developed Alzheimer's disease in middle age.
Alzheimer's strikes early and fairly often in these and other families around the world--often enough to be singled out as a separate form of the disease and given a label: early-onset familial Alzheimer's disease or FAD. Combing through the DNA of these early-onset families, researchers have found a mutation in one gene on chromosome 21 that is common to a few of the families. And they have linked a much larger proportion of early-onset families to a recently-identified gene on chromosome 14. The gene on chromosome 21 occurs less often in people with FAD than the chromosome 14 gene, which codes for a membrane protein whose function is not yet known.

The chromosome 21 gene carries the code for a mutated form of the amyloid precursor protein, APP, the parent protein for beta amyloid. The discovery of this gene supports the theory that beta amyloid plays a role in Alzheimer's disease, although the mutation occurs in only about 5 percent of early-onset families.

The chromosome 21 gene intrigues Alzheimer's researchers also because it is the gene involved in Down syndrome. People with Down syndrome have an extra version of chromosome 21 and, as they grow older, usually develop plaques and tangles like those found in Alzheimer's disease.

Few researchers think that the search for Alzheimer's genes is over. The Volga Germans, for one thing, have neither the chromosome 14 nor the chromosome 21 abnormality. Most investigators are convinced that there are several genes involved in Alzheimer's disease and, moreover, that other conditions must also be present for the disease to develop. One of these conditions may be a problem with the way in which neurons turn sugar, or glucose, into energy, a process known as glucose metabolism.

[lesser_satan]

God what a hideous, evil disease. I wish they'd redirect some of the money from AIDS research into Alzheimer's. I can't think of any disease I wouldn't prefer over Alzheimer's.

[adm5]

My 85 year old Grandmother has this disease. She has been on aricept (sp?) for close to 10 years now, and it has slowed the effects considerably.

It's kind of weird. She is one out of seven children. Out of those seven, there are five that ended up getting the disease.

One brother was killed in WWII, and the second youngest child, her brother is still alive and didn't get Alzeimers.

If it weren't for the medication, I'm sure we'd have lost her by now. The differences in how she is handling this with medication vs. how her siblings did is amazing.

[neverdem]

Thanks for the links & text.

[kinoxi]

I'm glad it's working for her.

[wideminded]

She has been on aricept (sp?) for close to 10 years now, and it has slowed the effects considerably.

An in-law was on Aricept. But I didn't notice any effect. It may have been started too late.

She is one out of seven children. Out of those seven, there are five that ended up getting the disease.

One brother was killed in WWII, and the second youngest child, her brother is still alive and didn't get Alzeimers.

Notice any difference in lifestyle, diet, etc. between him and the others?

[YdontUleaveLibs]

That is what I thought the article was going to be about.

[adm5]

I can't really say. I'll have to ask my Mom if she can identify anything different that her living uncle did vs. the others.

I'll reply back to this thread/you once I have that info.

[wideminded]

She asked me if my 1 YO son was her baby Willie (my father).

The cool thing is that she did remember having a baby Willie even though she was 96. It always seems that these older memories go last. My father had a non-Alzheimers form of dementia. Shortly before he died our family was sitting out under the stars and he started to give us a lecture about celestial navigation. It was all stuff he remembered from the Navy in WWII and was surprisingly detailed. As newer memories had faded, this old memory had become clearer.

[wideminded]

Thanks. I'd be very interested to hear what you find out.

[Myrddin]

I suspect my dad had Alzheimers along with diabetes. The developed a shuffling gait, was prone to fits of anger, would lose important things like his eyeglasses. Aphasia was clearly setting in as he became dependent on my mom to complete common sentences for him. He knew something was wrong as evidenced by brain scans in his medical charts when we took him to the hospital for the last time. He never shared the problems with anyone in the family. He was suddenly hospitalized just after Thanksgiving 2003 with badly inflamed lungs. It was all downhill. We're pretty sure he had a stroke shortly after admittance as he suddenly lost all memory of everyone in the family and his best friends overnight.

[texas booster]

Free Republic Folders - In Memory of Ronald Reagan

"ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE (AD) is caused by the aggregation of relatively small (42 amino acid) proteins, called Abeta peptides. These proteins form aggregates which even in small clumps appear to be toxic to neurons and cause neuronal cell death involved in Alzheimer's Disease and the horrible neurodegenerative consequences."

The link above is too the latest thread of the Free Republic Folders, a group of FReepers dedicated to advancing the study of Alzheimer's and other diseases. We use our computers when they are sitting idle to crunch proteins for Stanford University, allowing them to test theories about how malformed proteins cause illness.

If you have ever heard of the SETI distributed program searching for radio signals from space, then you will understand this program.

PLEASE check out the thread and download the program to help the group if you are so inclined!

[neverdem]

I suspect my dad had Alzheimers along with diabetes.

There's been increased suspicion about those two diagnoses.

Links between Alzheimer's disease and diabetes.

[Natural Law]

"memory trouble, aphasia (loss of the ability to use words), confusion, bursts of anger and paranoia.

Sounds like we have just diagnosed John Kerry's recent problem.

[Drango]

Join other FReepers fighting Alzheimers bump.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1721959/posts