Causes of Alzheimer's Disease | What Causes Alzheimer's

What causes Alzheimer's? Why does this disease plague our older population? Since Alzheimer's usually affects older people who are above 65 years of age, in fact almost half of people aged 85 and up in the U.S. are said to have this brain disease, it then generally established that this is a disease that comes with aging.

• While Alzheimer's is a problem that comes with age, there is a type of this disease that can affect younger individuals between 30 to 60 years old. This is called early onset Alzheimer's and is said to be caused by genetics. The chances of a person getting early cases of Alzheimer's is often dependent on whether a parent has it and these chances stand at 50 percent of the person having early Alzheimer's due to this factor.
• There are still no real findings as to what causes the illness aside from genetic disposition. The gene that seems to be seen as the probable cause of an increased risk of getting Alzheimer's in their old age is the gene called APOE or apoliprotein E. It has been seen that one of the many forms of this gene has been detected in around 40 percent of the people with this disease. While this may seem conclusive, a third of the people who suffer from Alzheimer's do not seem to have this gene though.