• Question: Why do some people get dementia and how is dementia different to alzheimers? Will there ever be a cure for it?

    Asked by emilyc9s to Fiona, Jane, Joanna, Michelle, William on 18 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Jane Henry

      Jane Henry answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      There are different causes for dementia and alzheimers. There are genes which predispose certain people to get dementia and alzheimers, hence you find it tends to run on certain families. However there are also environmental causes, recently herpes and cold sores have been implicated as a possible factor. In addition many over 80s have a mild form dementia with short term memory problems but are able to function. Diet may also be a factor. I expect we will get better at treating it, I dfo not know if we will ever be cure all forms of this disease, perhaps but probably not for a long while.

    • Photo: Joanna Brooks

      Joanna Brooks answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      Hello again! Dementia means a loss of general cognitive ability which can affect things like attention, memory, language and problem solving. Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia – people with Alzheimer’s disease usually lose their long-term memory. At present there is no cure – the main reason for this is that scientists don’t fully understand what causes dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. However, scientists often find tangles (like tangles in your hair) in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease – there is lots of research into these tangles.

      I really believe that there will be a cure in the future – many of the people I work with are scientists helping to understand more about these two disorders.

    • Photo: Michelle Murphy

      Michelle Murphy answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      Dementia is a general term for memory loss and confusion so Alzheimer’s is a severe type of dementia. I hope there will be a cure one day as we are starting to understand conditions like Alzheimer’s better and there is lots of good research happening.

    • Photo: William Davies

      William Davies answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      Dementia is a term for a whole host of disorders that get worse over time, and that affect important brain functions such as memory and the ability to plan ahead. Alzheimer’s Disease is one form of dementia, where the brain systems underlying memory are particularly affected. People get dementia due to a combination of their particular set of genes (some versions of genes involved in immunity and fat metabolism have recently been associated with risk of developing Alzheimer’s) and their environment (for example, things like head injuries and high cholesterol as a consequence of obesity) may influence susceptibility. There is some evidence that people with a higher IQ are protected from developing dementia, and females are more likely to develop the disorder than men for some reason

    • Photo: Fiona Randall

      Fiona Randall answered on 18 Jun 2010:

      Dementia is the loss of normal memory and brain function beyond what is normally expected with age. Alzheimer’s is a type of dementure that has defined symptoms like loss of spatial awareness and bad short term memory. In Alzheimer’s, a protein called amyloid being produced abnormally in the brain so it becomes sticky and clumps together. If you look at post-mortem brains of Alzheimer’s patients they have big lumps of this protein in their brains and they are called plaques. They don’t know if the plaques cause the dementure or as just a by-product of another problem but this is still being researched. Patients with dementure don’t have plaques I don’t think.

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