Introduction

Neurologists at a memory clinic in China have diagnosed a 19-year-old with what they believe is Alzheimer’s, making him the youngest person in the world to be diagnosed with the condition.

Memory Impairment

The teenager began to suffer from memory impairment at the age of 17, and over the course of two years, the cognitive loss worsened.

Brain Imaging

Imaging of the patient’s brain showed shrinkage of the hippocampus, which is involved in memory, and cerebrospinal fluid hinted at common signs of this most common type of dementia.

Early-Onset Alzheimer’s

It is believed that Alzheimer’s disease (AD) most often affects the elderly, but early cases, including in patients under the age of 65, account for up to 10% of all diagnoses.

Almost all patients under the age of 30 can attribute Alzheimer’s disease to pathogenic genetic mutations, placing them under the category of familial Alzheimer’s disease (FAD). And the younger a person is at the time of diagnosis, the more likely it is the result of a faulty gene they have inherited.

No Genetic Mutations Found

However, researchers at the Capital Medical University in Beijing were unable to find common mutations responsible for the early onset of memory loss, nor any suspicious genes in a genome-wide search.

Prior Youngest Patient

Prior to this diagnosis, the youngest Alzheimer’s patient in China was 21 years old. They identified a genetic mutation in PSEN1 that causes the accumulation of abnormal proteins in the brain and the formation of toxic plaque buildups that are characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease.

No family member of the 19-year-old had a history of Alzheimer’s or dementia, which would make it difficult to classify it as FAD, but the teen had no illness, infection, or head injury that could explain his sudden cognitive decline.

Symptoms and Decline

Two years before he was sent to the memory clinic, the teenage patient began to have difficulty concentrating on his lessons. Reading also became difficult and his short-term memory deteriorated. Often he did not remember the events of the previous day and always confused his comments.

Eventually, the cognitive decline became so severe that the young man was unable to graduate from high school, although he was still able to live on his own and without outside help.

A year after he was referred to the memory clinic, he showed losses in immediate recall, short-term recall after three minutes, and long-term recall after 30 minutes.

The patient’s total memory score was 82% lower than that of peers of his age, while his immediate memory score was 87% lower.

The Patient’s Diagnosis

The patient’s medical team said the diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease at such a young age “changes our understanding of the typical age of onset of Alzheimer’s.”

“The patient had very early-onset Alzheimer’s disease with no clear disease mutations,” neurologist Jianping Jia and colleagues wrote in their study, suggesting that the causes of his disease remain to be explored.

Complexity of Alzheimer’s

A case study published in February shows that Alzheimer’s does not follow a single path and that it is more complex than we thought as it manifests itself in different ways with different consequences.

In a statement to the South China Morning Post, the neurologists who described the patient’s case argued that future research should focus on early cases to improve our understanding of memory loss.

They predict that “exploring the mysteries of young people with Alzheimer’s may be one of the most challenging scientific questions of the future.”

Conclusion

The study highlighting the case of the youngest person diagnosed with Alzheimer’s was published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.

Source

Source: Science Alert