ABSTRACT
Alzheimer’s disease is without doubt the most studied among the amyloid diseases because of its great prevalence among the world’s growing aging population. Alois Alzheimer, a German physician, had already in 1906 observed brain deposits in an autopsy of a patient suffering from a brain disorder. He described his ndings and gave his name to the disease. It took until the 1980s before the molecular nature of the disease could be determined. The deposited extracellular plaques in the brain of deceased patients were analyzed and found to contain large amounts of the amyloid β-peptide (Aβ). Other anomalous deposits in the brains were so-called neurobrillar tangles found inside cells, and these tangles contained a large amount of a protein called tau. Present knowledge, however, links the disease mainly to the aggregation of the amyloid β-peptide.
