He is only 19 and suffers from Alzheimer’s. A Chinese teenager is the youngest person in the world to be diagnosed with the disease, according to scientific literature. He writes it the Journal of Alzheimer’s disease.
Early-onset Alzheimer’s disease is a rare form of dementia that affects people under the age of 65. It accounts for 5 to 10 percent of all cases of Alzheimer’s disease. Almost all patients with Alzheimer’s under 30 have genetic mutations (PS1, PS2, APP) that predispose to the disease. However, the adolescent did not have any of the genetic mutations identified so far linked to dementia and this makes the case unique because it would have been a very rare sporadic onset.
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Symptoms
The young man began to have difficulty concentrating at the age of 17, during his high school studies. The situation worsened the following year when the student began to suffer from short-term memory loss: he could not remember what had happened the previous day or where he had put some of his objects. At the same time he began to have difficulty reading and slow reactions. His memory gradually diminished: he often lost his things, didn’t remember whether or not he ate or not, couldn’t finish his homework. Eventually the student had to drop out of high school.
The discovery
The doctors who followed him, scientists from the National Clinical Research Center for Geriatric Diseases in Beijing, subjected the young man to a standardized test approved by the World Health Organization to evaluate his memory abilities, which were found to be impaired. The young patient then underwent more in-depth examinations: magnetic resonance imaging showed bilateral hippocampal atrophy and bilateral temporal lobe hypometabolism, both typical signs of Alzheimer’s disease. Examination of the patient’s cerebrospinal fluid revealed an increased concentration of tau protein, a biomarker of neurodegenerative diseases.
“All the data reported go in the direction of a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s although when there is an early onset there is generally a very clear genetic basis which in this case does not exist” comments Alessandro Padovani, director of the Neurology Clinic at the University of Brescia. «Juvenile-onset cases, between 28-32 years of age are known, and they are all linked to genetic mutations. However, such early cases have never been described, mostly unrelated to family histories or genetic mutations. The story of this boy is striking because there are already clear signs of the disease in an unexpectedly early age».
The study aims to pay attention to early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Exploring the mysteries of young people with Alzheimer’s disease could become one of the most challenging scientific questions in the future,” the authors write.