Aging: a Cause or a Risk for AD?

Abstract

Although Alzheimer’s disease (AD) as a distinct clinical entity was described nearly one hundred years ago, until recently it was considered an inevitable consequence of aging and dismissed as an untreatable condition. Since the mid-1970s, the progress of research rapidly moved this disease from obscurity to a position of prominence. In the last few years the numbers of theories about the underlying mechanisms have increased, scientific knowledge and attitudes about the disease have change dramatically. The article by Ming Chen and Hugo L. Fernandez entitled “Revisiting Alzheimer’s disease from the new perspective: Can ‘risk factors’ play a key role?” is another important attempt to develop a new theory on this disease. The authors assert that “natural aging plays a more important role in neurodegeneration than is currently recognized. Does this model over-simplify the disease origin?” The short answer to this rhetorical question is a simple yes! This answer is based on the following reasoning. The results of several epidemiological studies of risk factors have confirmed a correlation between age and the prevalence of the disease. The relationship between age, prevalence of dementia and presence of different alleles of APO E has added further credence to the assertion (hypothesis) that everyone over 65, if they live long enough, will eventually get “it”, Alzheimer’s dis-