RISK FACTORS FOR DEVELOPING ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE
One of the questions most frequently raised in the minds of those who have relatives with Alzheimer’s disease is the possibility that the condition may be passed on to succeeding generations. The son or daughter of a sufferer will often ask whether his or her own children are likely to be affected. Inherent in this question of course is a worry, often not voiced, that the inquirer may also be at an increased risk of developing dementia later in life. Although there is no doubt that there is a hereditary factor in Alzheimer’s disease, at least in some families, it is by no means as big a problem as people often imagine.
Apart from heredity, two further factors are liable to influence the incidence of Alzheimer’s disease. The first of these is increasing age. Overall, about 7 per cent of people aged sixty-five and over are thought to have some degree of dementia and in most cases this is likely to be caused by Alzheimer’s disease. However, this 7 per cent risk, approximately one chance in fifteen, is not spread uniformly throughout the elderly population. It varies from about one person in fifty in the age band sixty-five to seventy up to approximately one person in five in those aged eighty and over. In other words the older a person is, the more likely he or she is to develop dementia. The important thing of course is not that people over the age of eighty have a one in five chance of developing a dementing illness, whatever the underlying cause, but that at least 80 per cent of older people do not develop dementia. There is also some evidence that the very old, those in their nineties and beyond, have a declining risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. All in all, however old you are or wish to grow to, the odds are very much in your favour.
The other major risk factor for developing Alzheimer’s disease is Down’s syndrome, which used to be known as mongolism. Not so long ago it was unusual for a person with Down’s syndrome to live long into adult life. Associated conditions and other illnesses that those afflicted are particularly likely to develop sadly resulted in their dying in their twenties or thirties, if not before. Nowadays it is not unusual, however, for a person with Down’s syndrome to live to forty or fifty and even beyond. We now know that older people with Down’s syndrome develop similar changes in their brain to the plaques, tangles, and loss of nerve cells found in sufferers from Alzheimer’s disease.
There are many other postulated risk factors, including aluminium, viruses, and other infective agents. From time to time these feature prominently in the media but as yet there is no firm evidence that any of them play a significant role in causing Alzheimer’s. The only undisputed risk factors are increasing age, heredity in a few families, and Down’s syndrome. They will now be examined in more detail.
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