Alzheimer's disease detected in 19-year-old teenager in China

After experiencing memory issues from the age of 17, a 19-year-old Chinese teenager has been diagnosed with "probable" Alzheimer's disease. He will be the youngest person ever diagnosed with the illness if the diagnosis is confirmed.

The latest case study was published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease after the researchers from Capital Medical University in Beijing ran a battery of tests.

The biggest risk factor for having Alzheimer's disease is getting older, which this 19-year-old plainly does not have. Alzheimer's disease is most frequent in persons over the age of 65, according to NHS UK. Alzheimer's and other varieties of dementia become more common with age, affecting around 1 in 14 persons over the age of 65 and 1 in 6 people over the age of 80.


When the youngster reached 17, he began having difficulty concentrating on his academics. The next year, he also lost his short-term memory and couldn't remember if he'd eaten or done his schoolwork. The boy's memory loss grew so bad that he had to drop out of high school in his senior year.

In persons with Alzheimer's, beta-amyloid (a protein) is commonly located outside of neurons, whereas the "tangles" are found inside axons, the long projections of neurons. In this case, though, scans revealed no such characteristics in the boy's brain. In the patient's CSF fluid, the researchers discovered abnormally high quantities of a protein called p-tau181.

This is commonly observed prior to the production of tau "tangles" in the brain. The boy's hippocampus, a portion of the brain important in memory, has also decreased, according to the brain scans. This is a typical early symptom of dementia.

Almost all Alzheimer's disease instances in persons under the age of 30 are caused by defective genes.

Yet, in this newest, rare example, experts were unable to identify any genetic reason. Additionally, there is no history of Alzheimer's or dementia in the teen's family.

FAQ

Q1. What is the primary symptom of Alzheimer’s disease?
It primarily deals with memory loss among individuals

Q2. Which country saw the case of the youngest Alzheimer’s patient?
China recorded the case of the youngest Alzheimer’s patient.