A break in the chain

How Alzheimer's alters a victim's brain -- and life
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In the final stages, Alzheimer's disease turns a grown man or woman into a baby, curled in a fetal position, requiring all the care that a newborn would: feeding, massage, rocking and comforting. But while babies are just opening up to the possibilities of the world, those with Alzheimer's are shutting down, unaware of the joys and sorrows of their external environment.
If you were able to look at their brain, it would appear dramatically shrunken and ravaged: the cerebral cortex -- the outer surface of the brain responsible for all intellectual functioning -- has atrophied; almost every region of the brain is clogged by beta-amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles, making it impossible for nerve cells to communicate with each other.
Alzheimer's disease is named for Alois Alzheimer, a German who 100 years ago first described the ravages of the disease. He cut away the tops of skulls from people who died of a strange, mind-destroying illness that had left them helpless and speechless. He is believed to have been the first person to see inside a diseased brain and view the sticky amyloid plaques and the twisted, hair-like threads of the neurofibrillary tangles.
It's these plaques and tangles that are the hallmark of Alzheimer's disease.
They disrupt the three processes that keep neurons healthy: communication, metabolism and repair. This disruption causes certain nerve cells in the brain to stop working, lose connections with other nerve cells and, finally, die. The destruction and death of nerve cells cause the memory failure, personality changes, problems in carrying out daily activities and other features of the disease.
Even today, the only way to conclusively diagnose Alzheimer's disease is with an autopsy, in the way that Alois Alzheimer did a century ago.
The plaques are spherical structures, sometimes described as tiny "Brillo pads," that contain protein, nerve-cell fragments and other cells. The plaques are made of beta amyloid, a protein fragment snipped from a larger protein called amyloid precursor protein. These fragments clump together outside the nerve cells to form plaques.
The neurofibrillary tangles, found inside nerve cells, look like twisted bits of dental floss. They occur when another protein, called tau, which normally channels chemical messages inside nerve cells, deforms and collapses. This disables the neuron's transport system.
Scientists also still don't know if the plaques and tangles cause the disease or if they are a byproduct of the disease process.
Are they a result of a genetic mutation or caused by an environmental trigger? In Losing My Mind, American journalist Thomas DeBaggio wrote of early onset Alzheimer's, a disease that he said "silently hollows the brain" and slowly "gobbles memory and destroys life."
In it, DeBaggio mused about its potential causes. "The disease, or its potential, appears to rest secretly inside us until its evil time arises and a languid torture begins. This is a disease probably not caused by something you did to your body. It is, most likely, a consequence of bad luck, subtle effects activated in the brain, and parents who carried corrupted genes."