ABSTRACT
Cognitive impairment and dementia are increasing globally, as the population of the world ages at a rapid rate. This aging of the world’s population has been attributed to advances in nutrition and sanitation, as well as a declining birth rate in developed nations. Aging is the primary risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease (AD), which is the most common form of dementia (Ballard et al. 2011). Aging is the only risk factor that is consistently identified after age 80. In that age group, more women than men have dementia, but this may be due to the longer life span in women. The high prevalence of inherited dementias among individuals under age 65, previously called presenile dementia, has led to the identification of causative genes and subsequent molecular pathology of direct relevance to the more common sporadic disease seen in older patients.
