Christopher Medway edited Introduction.tex  over 8 years ago

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\textit{Introduction}  Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a an  incurable neurodegenerative disease, and the most common form of dementia. Although the clinical manifestations of  AD are striking,  typicallymanifests clinically as  cognitive decline with progressive episodic memory loss, although difinative diagnosis required histological examination of the brain examination post-mortum. Neuropathological hallamrks of AD include gross cortical atrophy, particularly of the temporal lobes and the presence of; i) nerofibrillary tangles of hyperphosphorylated tau protein and ii) extracellular deposited of amyloid plaques containing the \alpha\beta peptide of the amyloid presursor protein (APP).  Characteristic neuropathological hallmarks of AD including intracellular neurofibrillary tangles of hyperphosphorylated tau protein and extracellular plaques Whilst an early-onset, mendelian form of the disease exists (Early-onset Alzheimer's disease or EOAD), typically the results of highly penetrant autosomal dominant mutations in genes on the amyloid pathway (APP, PSEN1 and PSEN2), the late-onset form of the disease is more common accounting for ~95\% of AD cases.