{"id":113013,"date":"2024-10-11T18:54:46","date_gmt":"2024-10-11T11:54:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/?p=113013"},"modified":"2024-10-11T18:54:46","modified_gmt":"2024-10-11T11:54:46","slug":"the-sad-case-of-the-youngest-person-ever-diagnosed-with-alzheimers-sciencealert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/?p=113013","title":{"rendered":"The Sad Case of The Youngest Person Ever Diagnosed With Alzheimer&#8217;s : ScienceAlert"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-3711241968723425\"\r\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block\"\r\n     data-ad-format=\"fluid\"\r\n     data-ad-layout-key=\"-fb+5w+4e-db+86\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-3711241968723425\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"7910942971\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>In 2023, neurologists at a memory clinic in China diagnosed a 19-year-old with what they believed to be <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/go\/IaO\" class=\"lar_link lar_link_outgoing\" data-linkid=\"73015\" data-postid=\"140446\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_self\">Alzheimer&#8217;s<\/a> disease<span style=\"letter-spacing: -0.025em;\">, making him the youngest person ever to be diagnosed with the condition in the world.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The male teenager began experiencing memory decline around age 17, and the cognitive losses only worsened over the years.<\/p>\n<p>Imaging of the patient&#8217;s brain showed shrinkage in the hippocampus, which is involved in memory, and his cerebrospinal fluid hinted at common markers of this most common form of dementia<span style=\"letter-spacing: -0.025em;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Alzheimer&#8217;s disease (AD) is often thought of as an old person&#8217;s ailment, and yet early-onset cases, which include patients under the age of 65, account for up to 10 percent of all diagnoses.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_136965\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-136965\" style=\"width: 642px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/images\/2024\/08\/older_woman_home_AD-642x260.jpg\" alt=\"older woman in a care home\" width=\"642\" height=\"260\" class=\"wp-image-136965 size-medium\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/images\/2024\/08\/older_woman_home_AD-642x260.jpg 642w, https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/images\/2024\/08\/older_woman_home_AD-768x311.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/images\/2024\/08\/older_woman_home_AD-600x243.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/images\/2024\/08\/older_woman_home_AD.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 642px) 100vw, 642px\" loading=\"lazy\"\/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-136965\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Alzheimer&#8217;s is today an incredibly common disease among older people, but it&#8217;s comparatively rare in the young. (zeljkosantrac\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Almost all patients under 30 years of age can have their Alzheimer&#8217;s explained by pathological gene mutations, putting them into the category of familial Alzheimer&#8217;s disease (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.alzforum.org\/early-onset-familial-ad\/overview\/what-early-onset-familial-alzheimer-disease-efad\">FAD<\/a>). The younger a person is when they receive a diagnosis, the more likely it is the result of a faulty gene they&#8217;ve inherited.<\/p>\n<p>Yet researchers at the Capital Medical University in Beijing couldn&#8217;t find any of the usual mutations responsible for the early onset of memory loss, nor any suspect genes when they performed a genome-wide search.<\/p>\n<p>Before this diagnosis in China, <a href=\"https:\/\/europepmc.org\/article\/med\/34366350\">the youngest patient with Alzheimer&#8217;s<\/a> was 21 years old. They carried the <a href=\"https:\/\/medlineplus.gov\/genetics\/gene\/psen1\/\">PSEN1 gene mutation<\/a>, which causes abnormal proteins to build up in the brain, forming clumps of toxic plaques, a common feature of Alzheimer&#8217;s.<\/p>\n<p>Cases like the one in China pose something of a mystery. None of the 19-year-old&#8217;s family had a history of Alzheimer&#8217;s or dementia, making it hard to categorize as FAD, yet the teenager had no other diseases, infections, or head trauma that could explain his sudden cognitive decline either.<\/p>\n<p>Two years before being referred to the memory clinic, the teenage patient began struggling to focus in class. Reading also became difficult and his short-term memory declined. Oftentimes, he couldn&#8217;t remember events from the day before, and he was always misplacing his belongings.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_89131\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-89131\" style=\"width: 642px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/images\/2023\/03\/TelomeresCognitiveDecline-642x260.jpg\" alt=\"Depressive Symptoms And Memory Loss in Older Adults Linked to Telomere Shortening\" width=\"642\" height=\"260\" class=\"wp-image-89131 size-medium\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/images\/2023\/03\/TelomeresCognitiveDecline-642x260.jpg 642w, https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/images\/2023\/03\/TelomeresCognitiveDecline.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/images\/2023\/03\/TelomeresCognitiveDecline-768x311.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/images\/2023\/03\/TelomeresCognitiveDecline-600x243.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 642px) 100vw, 642px\" loading=\"lazy\"\/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-89131\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Patients over 65 account for the vast majority of AD cases. (Maskot\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Ultimately, the cognitive decline became so bad, the young man was unable to finish high school, although he could still live independently.<\/p>\n<p>A year after being referred to the memory clinic, he showed losses in immediate recall, short-delay recall after three minutes, and long-delay recall after 30 minutes.<\/p>\n<p>The patient&#8217;s full-scale memory score was 82 percent lower than that of peers his own age, while his immediate memory score was 87 percent lower.<\/p>\n<p>Long-term follow-up is needed to support the young man&#8217;s diagnosis, but his medical team <a href=\"https:\/\/content.iospress.com\/articles\/journal-of-alzheimers-disease\/jad221065\">said<\/a> at the time the patient was &#8220;altering our understanding of the typical age of onset of AD.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The patient had very early-onset AD with no clear pathogenic mutations,&#8221; <span>neurologist Jianping Jia and colleagues <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/content.iospress.com\/articles\/journal-of-alzheimers-disease\/jad221065\">wrote in their study<\/a>, &#8220;which suggests that its pathogenesis still needs to be explored.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The case study, published in February 2023, just goes to show that Alzheimer&#8217;s doesn&#8217;t follow a single pathway, and is <a href=\"https:\/\/sciencealert.com\/alzheimers-might-not-actually-be-a-brain-disease-expert-says\">much more complex<\/a> than we thought, emerging <a href=\"https:\/\/sciencealert.com\/study-splits-alzheimer-s-into-three-subtypes-and-it-might-help-us-treat-it-better\">via numerous avenues<\/a> with varying effects.<\/p>\n<p>In a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scmp.com\/news\/china\/science\/article\/3209607\/chinese-diagnosis-worlds-youngest-person-probable-alzheimers-set-change-thinking-about-disease?module=perpetual_scroll_0&amp;pgtype=article&amp;campaign=3209607\">statement<\/a> to the South China Morning Post, the neurologists who described the patient&#8217;s case argued that future studies should focus on early-onset cases to further improve our understanding of memory loss.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Exploring the mysteries of young people with Alzheimer&#8217;s disease may become one of the most challenging scientific questions of the future,&#8221; they <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scmp.com\/news\/china\/science\/article\/3209607\/chinese-diagnosis-worlds-youngest-person-probable-alzheimers-set-change-thinking-about-disease?module=perpetual_scroll_0&amp;pgtype=article&amp;campaign=3209607\">said<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The study was published in the <a href=\"https:\/\/content.iospress.com\/articles\/journal-of-alzheimers-disease\/jad221065\"><em>Journal of Alzheimer&#8217;s Disease<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><em>An earlier version of this article was published in February 2023.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-3711241968723425\"\r\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block\"\r\n     data-ad-format=\"fluid\"\r\n     data-ad-layout-key=\"-fb+5w+4e-db+86\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-3711241968723425\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"7910942971\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><div data-type=\"_mgwidget\" data-widget-id=\"1660802\">\r\n<\/div>\r\n<script>(function(w,q){w[q]=w[q]||[];w[q].push([\"_mgc.load\"])})(window,\"_mgq\");\r\n<\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/the-sad-case-of-the-youngest-person-ever-diagnosed-with-alzheimers\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 2023, neurologists at a memory clinic in China diagnosed a 19-year-old with what they believed to be Alzheimer&#8217;s disease, making him the youngest person ever to be diagnosed with &hellip; 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