Alzheimer's disease

Abstract

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common cause of progressive cognitive decline in the aging human population. The disease is definitively diagnosed by the presence of extracellular amyloid deposits in the form of plaques and congophilic angiopathy, as well as intracellular neurofibrillary tangles, in postmortem brains. The amyloid deposits consist mostly of self-aggregating 40 to 43 amino acid residue peptides, Aβ, which are proteolytically derived from a family of 695 to 770 amino acid transmembrane glycoproteins, the amyloid precursor proteins (APP). The molecular pathogenesis of the disease remains unclear, but progress toward identifying therapeutic targets is gaining pace. Studies c..