ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE was brought to attention in 1906 by a German neurologist Alois Alzheimer, who discovered some curious microscopic changes in the brain of a deceased demented patient.

"Dear Mr. Spelling, I forgot to do my homework again because I'm suffering from Alzheimer's".

No one knows what causes this illness but what we do know today is that it mainly affects persons over 60 years old and leads to microscopic scarring of their brains and loss of brain weight. This accelerated loss of brain cells is like losing chips in your computer. It leads to poor function of brain dependent activities as less computing power is available to the brain.

The person with Alzheimer's has problems with memory, deep thought, movement, logic, writing, and/or knowing where and who s/he is to different degrees - with worsening as time goes on.

One major advance in treating Alzheimer's is finding from studies that the brains of these patients produce less than normal amounts of a chemical called acetylcholine. Current therapy therefore involves artificially raising the level of this chemical by drugs.

Alzheimer's is diagnosed clinically by noting a progressive deterioration in mental function after 60 and scoring poorly on a test called the Mental Status Examination - a test comprising of a battery of questions and skills the person in question could have answered before.

Life expectancy after diagnosis is 10 to twenty years.