The story beyond Auguste D.

Mrs. Auguste Deter was the first known patient of Alzheimer's disease (AD) named after her doctor, Dr. Alois Alzheimer. Looking through his notes published since, we can get a keen and frightful insight in Mrs. D's final years. She had no sense of time, not even of "basic" things we take for granted. Basic things as your first name, last name - that normally we don't need any preparation or coaching to answer. But it was beyond her ability, and all AD patients since then. In her interview with Dr. Alzheimer, she remarked, "I have lost myself". What Dr. Alzheimer found out upon autopsy of her brain, something we know for certain about this disease today, that it is not so much that she had lost herself, rather her "self" was taken from her!* Autopsy of her brain showed the two key molecular culprits, present as 'plaques' and 'tangles'.

Plaques, made up of amyloid beta, are nestled between neurons and prevent them from communicating to each other. On this note, I have to tell you what somebody once commented to me on 'man being a social animal', that if a disease doesn't kill a man, isolation will! Well, this is true in a literal sense for our nerve cells or neurons. At any stage of life, if a neuron cannot communicate, it will surely perish. In an advanced case like that of Mrs. D, the plaques are very prominent. In fact, Dr. Alzheimer could see them  without any stain at all!

The second unique found in her brain were tangles, ominous-looking strands wound like ropes. These are mostly present inside dying neurons. The protein that wounds up in these ropy strands is the tau protein.

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Next post: links between amyloid beta and tau

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* David Shenk, "The Memory Hole". NY Times, 2006