A 19-year-old boy was diagnosed with probable Alzheimer’s disease after developing clear clinical signs of dementia, such as significant cognitive impairment. Neurodegenerative disease usually affects people over 65 years of age.
A boy of alone 19 years received a terrible diagnosis by their own doctors: probable Alzheimer’s disease. It’s about the earlier case noto in scientific literature of the incurable neurodegenerative pathologythe most common form of dementia in the world. For further confirmation, the doctors should have subjected the young man to an invasive procedure brain biopsybut given their age and the potential serious health risks they decided to avoid, continuing to monitor the disease progression.
The clinical case of the boy was described by a Chinese research team led by scientists from the National Clinical Research Center for Geriatric Diseases in Beijing, who collaborated closely with colleagues from the Key Laboratory of Geriatric Cognitive Disorders, the Key Laboratory of Neurodegenerative Diseases, the Institute for Brain Disorders and other research centers. The young man’s odyssey began about two years ago, when he was a model student in high school. Among the first manifestations of the disease, difficulties with studying appeared, then i symptoms of the cognitive impairment in place they have become more evident: significant memory loss short-term, slower reaction times, difficulty reading and other cognitive disorders which forced him to leave school and turn to experts.
Doctors first subjected him to a standardized test of the World Health Organization to evaluate memory skills (called the World Health Organization-University of California Los Angeles Auditory Verbal Learning Test or WHO-UCLA AVLT), which highlighted his deterioration. It was subsequently subjected to extensive examinations, such as a positron emission tomography – MRI with fludeoxyglucose, which revealed both thebilateral hippocampal atrophy and that a hypometabolism in the bilateral temporal lobe. Both are clinical signs characteristic of Alzheimer’s. Even the examination of cerebrospinal fluid (or cerebrospinal) brought out biomarkers related to dementia, such as major tau protein concentration. This condition precedes the formation of the notorious tangles of tau protein in the brain, which are detected in the brain tissue of patients. However, doctors have not identified the signs of the beta amyloid plaques, one of the most obvious features of Alzheimer’s. As explained in the case report, this could depend on the age of the patient. Indeed, according to Professor Jianping Jia and his colleagues, the very rapid metabolism of the young man could have hindered the pathological mechanism of accumulation.
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In the light of all these considerations, the diagnosis of probable Alzheimer’s disease. To date in the scientific literature the youngest known patient was a 21 year old, affected by a hereditary form of early Alzheimer’s affecting only a small percentage of patients. As explained by the Humanitas Institute, less than 5 percent of cases are linked to the presence of mutations in specific genes: among those involved “the gene of presenilin 1 (PS1) on chromosome 14, of presenilin 2 (PS2) on chromosome 1 or of the protein precursor of beta amyloid (APP) on chromosome 21”. But in the case of the 19-year-old boy, there was no family history of early/hereditary Alzheimer’s, so it would have been a very rare sporadic occurrencewhich sheds new light on a disease known to affect people with over 65 years old. “The study suggests paying attention to early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Exploring the mystery of young people with Alzheimer’s disease could become one of the most challenging scientific questions of the future,” the study authors explained in a statement published by the Chinese newspaper South China Morning Post.
Currently, Alzheimer’s disease affects about 60 million people worldwide, but it is estimated that by 2050 there will be about 150 million patients, with an enormous health, social and economic impact. Studying cases like that of the 19-year-old in depth will help doctors learn more about this devastating disease, which is currently incurable. The details of the research “A 19-Year-Old Adolescent with Probable Alzheimer’s Disease” have been published in the authoritative specialized scientific journal Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.