Neurologists of a medical clinic in China, news of the diagnosis of a person 19 years old They gave Alzheimer’s. updated Alzheimer’s in youth And young age is very rare, and this issue has made this Chinese citizen the youngest Alzheimer’s patient in the world.
Alzheimer’s in youth; A rare disease of hereditary origin
According to an article published in the scientific journal Alzheimer’s, the Chinese youth in question aged 17 years old He has suffered from a decline in memory performance, and with the passing of several years, the problems related to his forgetfulness have worsened. The medical imaging of his brain shows that the patient’s hippocampus has been destroyed. The said area in the brain plays a fundamental role in important functions such as learning and memory. Usually, damage to the hippocampus or its surgical removal causes serious neurological disorders. Also, the common markers of Alzheimer’s have been detected in his cerebrospinal fluid.
Alzheimer’s disease usually appears in the elderly, and people who are younger than 65 years They suffer from early Alzheimer’s disease, it is only 10% of patients. However, Alzheimer’s is very rare in young people and ages less than 30 years, and almost all young people who get this disease have pathogenic mutations in their genes. Such patients can become carriers of defective genes and prepare the ground for the occurrence of hereditary Alzheimer’s disease in their children. The younger the patient with Alzheimer’s disease, the more certain the occurrence of gene mutations can be predicted.
It is worth noting that researchers at Capital Medical University in Beijing failed to identify common mutations known to cause memory loss in the genome of this 19-year-old patient. Even in more extensive research, no suspicious genes were found in the samples obtained from him. Until now, the youngest person with Alzheimer’s disease was a 21-year-old patient whose mutated PSEN1 gene caused his disease to develop. People who carry this gene have a disorder in the production of proteins in the brain, and defective proteins can form pathogenic plaques in the brain.
Diagnosing Alzheimer’s in a 19-year-old youth who has no family history of Alzheimer’s or other diseases and trauma is a very strange thing, and due to the lack of mutations in genes, he cannot be included among patients with hereditary Alzheimer’s. But the symptoms of his disease are very similar to Alzheimer’s; So that they started with losing concentration in the classroom two years ago and now they have reached the border of short-term memory impairment. His memory test score was about 80% lower than his peers; But fortunately, he can still manage his personal affairs independently.
