99 Fun Facts About Alzheimer's Disease

Alzheimer's causes most dementia, but which rarer type was actor Bruce Willis diagnosed with in 2023?

Frontotemporal dementia. It tends to strike earlier than other dementias and often shows first in language or behaviour, which is why his family first announced aphasia; Alzheimer's causes 60 to 70 percent of dementia cases.

How did fellow psychiatrists respond when Alois Alzheimer first presented his landmark case in 1906?

With no questions at all. The chairman said there was no need for discussion and moved on to talks that drew long, lively debate; a disappointed Alzheimer published the case the following year.

Which brain region is among the first that Alzheimer's disease damages?

The hippocampus. It is essential for forming new memories, which is why early Alzheimer's blurs this morning's conversation while leaving decades-old memories largely intact.

What do doctors call memory loss that is worse than normal ageing but doesn't yet disrupt daily life?

Mild cognitive impairment. It can be an early stage of Alzheimer's, but not everyone who has it goes on to develop dementia: in some people the symptoms stay the same or even improve.

Which protein forms the neurofibrillary tangles inside neurons?

Tau. In a healthy neuron it steadies the tracks that carry nutrients along the cell; in Alzheimer's it lets go, sticks to other tau molecules and forms tangles that block the transport system.

Which metal has long been suspected of causing Alzheimer's, though decades of studies have found no convincing evidence?

Aluminium. Studies of people exposed to high levels have pointed both ways, and very little of the metal a person takes in comes from the cookware and drink cans that worried people.

A landmark study of ageing and Alzheimer's followed 678 members of which group, who all agreed to donate their brains?

Catholic nuns. In the Nun Study, essays the sisters wrote on entering their order more than half a century earlier foretold who would develop Alzheimer's: the denser in ideas, the lower the risk.

What is the strongest known genetic risk factor for the common, late-onset form of Alzheimer's disease?

The APOE epsilon-4 allele. About one person in five carries a copy and two copies raise the risk further, yet some carriers never develop the disease, so it signals risk, not fate.

Which actor learned while filming his series Limitless that he carries two copies of a gene variant tied to Alzheimer's?

Chris Hemsworth. He inherited one copy from each parent, which his doctor on the show said makes the disease eight to ten times likelier, and his grandfather already had it.

The world's largest known family with an inherited, early-striking form of Alzheimer's lives in which South American country?

Colombia. Neurologist Francisco Lopera spent over 30 years tracing the family around Medellín, whose mutation usually brings memory loss by the mid-40s; one carrier who stayed sharp until 67 is now a clue to resisting it.

Adults with which condition usually show Alzheimer's brain changes by 40?

Down syndrome. The extra chromosome 21 carries the APP gene, which makes the amyloid in plaques, so they build decades early; even so, not everyone who has them goes on to develop dementia.

The estimate that Alzheimer's is about 70% heritable comes from studying whom?

Twins. Comparing them puts the inherited share at 60 to 80 percent, yet the risk genes found so far explain much less of it, a gap geneticists call missing heritability.

Which fantasy author called his early-onset Alzheimer's an 'embuggerance' in 2007?

Terry Pratchett. The Discworld creator, then 59, said the disease lay behind what doctors had taken for a stroke, and he spent his last years campaigning for dementia research and the right to an assisted death.

What is the greatest known risk factor for Alzheimer's disease?

Advancing age. After 65 the risk roughly doubles every five years, yet Alzheimer's is not a normal part of ageing: even past 85, about two people in three do not have it.

Almost two-thirds of Americans living with Alzheimer's belong to which group?

Women. Longer lives were long thought to explain the gap, but researchers have begun to ask whether women's risk is also higher at any given age.

Which country star's farewell tour after his 2011 Alzheimer's diagnosis became the documentary I'll Be Me?

Glen Campbell. Three of his children backed him on stage through the tour, and the film's theme, 'I'm Not Gonna Miss You', brought the 'Rhinestone Cowboy' singer an Oscar nomination.

Several Alzheimer's drugs ease symptoms by slowing the breakdown of which chemical messenger?

Acetylcholine. It carries signals for memory and learning, and the disease kills the cells that make it; the drugs stretch what is left, which helps for a time but does not stop the damage.

Which drug is commonly prescribed to ease the memory symptoms of Alzheimer's disease?

Donepezil. Sold as Aricept, it is approved for every stage from mild to severe, yet it only eases symptoms for a time and does nothing to slow the disease underneath.

Which herbal supplement, long sold as a memory aid, failed to prevent dementia in a six-year US trial of 3,000 older adults?

Ginkgo biloba. People taking the leaf extract developed dementia at the same rate as those on a placebo, and US health officials say it has not been shown to work for any condition.

Lecanemab and donanemab both won US approval with a boxed warning about what?

Brain swelling and bleeding. Both drugs are antibodies that strip amyloid from the brain, and the risk is highest in people with two copies of a common risk gene, so patients are gene-tested and scanned.

Before the early 2000s, what was the only sure way to confirm Alzheimer's disease?

Examining brain tissue after death. Pathologists looked for the plaques and tangles first described in 1906; brain scans and spinal-fluid tests can now reveal the same signs in a living person.

Doctors check for a shortage of which vitamin because it can cause memory loss and confusion that mimic dementia?

Vitamin B12. A deficiency can bring confusion and memory problems, and unlike Alzheimer's the damage can often be halted or even reversed with treatment, which is why doctors rule it out early.

In which 2004 film does an elderly man read a love story to his wife, whose dementia has erased it?

The Notebook. Nicholas Sparks based the novel on his wife's grandparents, who had spent more than 60 years together; in the book the wife's illness is named as Alzheimer's.

Which is the most common behavioural or psychological symptom of Alzheimer's disease?

Apathy. Patients lose their drive and interest, a change often taken for depression, yet the two are separate: apathy can come without any of the sadness or guilt.

What is the term for the worsening of confusion and agitation in the late afternoon and evening?

Sundowning. It is a pattern of behaviour, not a disease, and the suspected triggers are end-of-day exhaustion, dim light that fills a room with shadows, and a daily rhythm the illness has thrown off.

By what name is the first patient Alois Alzheimer described with the disease known in medical history?

Auguste D. She was Auguste Deter, a railway clerk's wife whose husband brought her to an asylum after she turned jealous, confused and sleepless; Alzheimer followed her case for five years.

What did Alois Alzheimer's first patient keep saying as she struggled with a writing test in 1901?

'I have lost myself'. She added 'so to speak', and Alzheimer took down her answers word for word; asked what she was eating, pork and cauliflower, she answered 'spinach'.

In which German city did Alois Alzheimer treat the first patient he described with the disease?

Frankfurt. He left the city soon afterwards but kept asking after her until she died, and her handwritten file, lost for decades, turned up in a Frankfurt clinic archive in the 1990s.

Which psychiatrist, Alois Alzheimer's superior, named the disease after him in a 1910 textbook?

Emil Kraepelin. He coined the name for what then seemed a very rare illness of middle age, and it was nearly forgotten for half a century, until the 1970s widened it to the far commoner dementia of old age.

Which Supreme Court justice, whose husband had Alzheimer's, announced her own dementia diagnosis in 2018?

Sandra Day O'Connor. The court's first woman justice stepped down in 2006, in part to care for her husband, and withdrew from public life when dementia reached her too.

Which 1940s Hollywood star's Alzheimer's diagnosis in the 1980s drew worldwide attention to the disease?

Rita Hayworth. For years her forgotten lines and erratic behaviour were put down to drink; once the illness was named, the publicity helped win federal funding for Alzheimer's research.

Which singer gave two farewell concerts in 2021, months after his Alzheimer's diagnosis was made public?

Tony Bennett. Diagnosed in 2016, he kept recording and touring, sang the two shows with Lady Gaga at 95, and retired from the stage a week later.

Which US president announced his Alzheimer's diagnosis in a handwritten letter in November 1994?

Ronald Reagan. He wrote that speaking openly about Nancy's cancer and his own had led many more people to get tested, and that he hoped this letter would do the same for Alzheimer's.

Which 2001 film, based on John Bayley's memoir, follows his novelist wife's decline into Alzheimer's disease?

Iris. Kate Winslet and Judi Dench play Iris Murdoch young and old, so the film can cut between the brilliant, dominant novelist and the wife her shy husband ends up nursing at home.

About half of dementia's US$1.3 trillion global cost in 2019 came from what?

Unpaid family care. The WHO counts the hours relatives and friends put in, about five a day on average, as half the bill.

The Lancet Commission lists which midlife condition among dementia's biggest modifiable risks?

Hearing loss. Using hearing aids appears to reduce the extra risk, which is why the commission urges people to wear them and to protect their ears from loud noise as a way of warding off dementia.

Some researchers have nicknamed Alzheimer's 'type 3' of which disease?

Diabetes. In Alzheimer's the brain responds poorly to insulin, much as the body does in type 2, and having diabetes raises the risk of dementia; the label is a hypothesis, not a diagnosis.

The pioneering 'dementia village', a gated neighbourhood where carers run the shops and restaurant, is in which country?

The Netherlands. At De Hogeweyk, near Amsterdam, the supermarket, hair salon and theatre are staffed by carers so that residents can roam freely instead of living on a ward.

A 2013 study in mice reported that the brain clears amyloid beta, the protein in Alzheimer's plaques, faster during which state?

Sleep. The space between brain cells grew by about 60% in the sleeping mice, letting fluid wash waste away; a 2024 mouse study reported the opposite, that clearance slows during sleep.

Which type of scan, using a tracer that sticks to amyloid, can show Alzheimer's plaques in a living brain?

A PET scan. A tracer for the purpose won American approval in 2012; a clear scan is the telling result, because it suggests that something other than Alzheimer's lies behind the dementia.

Which comic actor testified to the US Senate about Alzheimer's in 2014 and co-founded the charity Hilarity for Charity?

Seth Rogen. His mother-in-law developed early-onset Alzheimer's, and he and his wife, Lauren Miller Rogen, set up the charity to pay for care and research and to get a younger generation talking about it.

For patients who struggle with pills, the Alzheimer's drug rivastigmine also comes in which form?

A skin patch. Changed once a day, it feeds the drug in steadily through the skin and causes less of the nausea and vomiting that the capsules can bring.

Which 2014 film follows a Columbia linguistics professor who is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's?

Still Alice. Novelist Lisa Genova is a neuroscientist, and co-director Richard Glatzer was living with ALS, another degenerative illness, which is why the story hit home for its makers.

The MIND diet, studied for cognitive protection, combines elements of the Mediterranean diet and which other?

DASH. It stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension, a blood-pressure diet; early studies tied the hybrid to a lower Alzheimer's risk, but a three-year trial of about 600 people found little gain over a control diet.

In 2025 the FDA cleared the first test of which kind to help diagnose Alzheimer's?

A blood test. It measures two proteins tied to the brain's amyloid plaques in people aged 55 or over who already have symptoms, sparing many of them a costly brain scan or a spinal tap.

In 2015, dementia overtook which condition as the leading cause of death in England and Wales?

Heart disease. Statisticians put the switch down to people living longer, fewer of them dying of heart disease, and doctors spotting dementia more often and giving it more weight on death certificates.

Which Hollywood star announced his Alzheimer's symptoms in a taped message in 2002?

Charlton Heston. 'I can part the Red Sea, but I can't part with you,' said the star of The Ten Commandments, telling fans that for an actor there is no greater loss than the loss of his audience.

Many US states issue which alert, similar to an Amber Alert, when an older adult with dementia goes missing?

Silver Alert. Wandering is common in dementia, so states such as Texas put a missing person's details on radio, television and sometimes highway signs.

In the three-minute Mini-Cog screening test for dementia, patients recall three words and draw what?

A clock face. Its designers say the test takes under ten minutes to learn to give, and a poor score is not a diagnosis, only a sign that fuller testing is needed.

In the 1999 film Deep Blue Sea, scientists seeking an Alzheimer's cure make which animals smarter?

Sharks in the film have their brains enlarged so researchers can harvest a protein, a shortcut that leaves the animals smart enough to turn on the crew.

Some nursing homes build fake versions of what, with old timetables, for residents with dementia?

Bus stops where no bus ever calls let restless residents sit and wait for an imagined journey until a staff member walks them back inside.

PARO, a robot used to calm people with dementia in care homes, is modelled on which baby animal?

Harp seal pups on a Canadian ice field inspired PARO's Japanese designer, who recorded their cries to give the robot its voice.

The Alzheimer's drug galantamine was first isolated from the bulbs of which flower?

Snowdrop bulbs gave chemists in the Soviet Union the first galantamine, an alkaloid also found in daffodils and red spider lilies.

Which Mel Brooks regular kept his Alzheimer's diagnosis private until his death in 2016?

Gene Wilder had been diagnosed three years earlier; the star of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory died at 83 at his home in Connecticut.

Which comedian's widow wrote in the journal Neurology about his Lewy body disease?

Robin Williams had been told he had Parkinson's; doctors who studied his brain called the Lewy body damage among the worst they had seen.

Analysis of which crime writer's last novels suggests the onset of Alzheimer's or another dementia?

Agatha Christie kept writing as her health failed in the early 1970s; Postern of Fate, the last novel she wrote, came out in 1973.

Which colour is the signature of the US Alzheimer's Association, chosen to blend calm with energy?

Purple mixes blue, which the charity reads as calm and stable, with the passionate energy of red.

Dementia pugilistica, a brain condition first studied in the 1920s, took its name from which sport?

Boxing gave the condition, now called CTE, its old nickname of punch drunk; the damaged brains show tangles in a different pattern from Alzheimer's.

A 2025 study in Wales found a vaccine against which illness cut new dementia diagnoses by a fifth?

Shingles jabs were offered by exact date of birth, so researchers could compare people born just weeks apart.

Which actor won a second Best Actor Oscar as a man slipping into dementia in The Father?

Anthony Hopkins starred in a script that Florian Zeller adapted from his own 2012 stage play, Le Père.

In Grey's Anatomy, which surgeon's mother, herself a renowned surgeon, has early-onset Alzheimer's?

Meredith cut short a trip abroad to look after her mother, Ellis, who stays in the story until her death in the third season.

Which tech billionaire pledged $50 million in 2017 to a venture fund seeking Alzheimer's treatments?

Bill Gates backed the Dementia Discovery Fund, then promised another $50 million to start-ups working on Alzheimer's research.

Which flower do many UK health settings use as a symbol to flag that a patient has dementia?

Forget-me-not symbols go on notes, bedsides and patient boards, and the flower is also the emblem of New Zealand's Alzheimer's charity.

What name is given to short-term help that lets a family caregiver rest, travel or see friends?

Respite care can last from a few hours to several weeks, and can be given at home, in a health facility or at an adult day centre.

What nickname describes middle-aged adults caring for ageing parents and their own children at once?

Sandwich generation carers are often supporting a parent with Alzheimer's or another dementia while raising a family of their own.

Prevagen, a memory supplement accused of false advertising, touts a protein from which sea creature?

Jellyfish protein was touted as the active ingredient, but US regulators charged in 2017 that the memory claims were unsubstantiated.

Which brain-training app's maker paid $2 million in 2016 to settle charges of deceptive advertising?

Lumosity ads had suggested its games could stave off memory loss, dementia and even Alzheimer's, a claim regulators said lacked the science.

The word dementia, first recorded in English in 1806, comes from Latin that literally means what?

Out of one's mind is the literal sense of the Latin de mente, the phrase behind demens, the Roman word for mad or raving.

Which gland, when underactive, is a reversible cause that doctors rule out before diagnosing dementia?

Thyroid trouble is a cause of confusion and forgetfulness that treatment can reverse, which is why it is checked first.

Which Tennessee coach, winner of eight national titles, announced her early-onset Alzheimer's in 2011?

Pat Summitt coached one more season before stepping down with 1,098 wins, at the time the most in college basketball history.

Which NBC journalist from the Kennedy family became an Alzheimer's campaigner after her father's 2003 diagnosis?

Maria Shriver won two Emmys as executive producer of The Alzheimer's Project and went on to chair California's Alzheimer's task force.

Which president signed the National Alzheimer's Project Act, which led to a US plan to tackle the disease?

Barack Obama signed the act, written by senators Susan Collins and Evan Bayh, in January 2011.

Which sudden state of confusion, often set off by an infection, can be mistaken for dementia?

Delirium usually develops over hours to days rather than years, and it can strike people who already have dementia as well as those who do not.

Which legal document, made 'durable', lets a chosen person keep acting for someone who becomes incapacitated?

Power of attorney can only be granted while a person has capacity; once someone is incapacitated, it is too late to sign one.

Which US programme for people with low incomes covers nursing home care that Medicare normally does not?

Medicaid is run jointly by the states and the federal government, and pays for long-term help at home as well as in nursing homes.

Which 1993 US law lets workers take up to 12 weeks off without pay to nurse a seriously ill parent?

Family and Medical Leave Act time off is job-protected, and can also be used for a new child or the worker's own serious illness.

Brain disease in former players led England and Scotland to ban which football skill from young children's training?

Heading was taken out of training for primary-age children in 2020, after a 2019 study found former professionals three and a half times likelier to die of neurodegenerative disease.

Lecanemab, which targets amyloid in early Alzheimer's, belongs to which class of lab-made medicines?

Monoclonal antibodies are made to lock on to one target; lecanemab is a humanised mouse antibody that keeps amyloid beta from being deposited.

To measure Alzheimer's proteins in cerebrospinal fluid, doctors collect a sample using which procedure?

A lumbar puncture, also called a spinal tap, draws the fluid through a needle inserted into the spinal canal between the lower vertebrae.

In the Mini-Mental State Examination, patients may be asked to spell which five-letter word backwards?

WORLD in reverse is the alternative to serial sevens, counting down from 100 in sevens; both tasks test attention.

Which Canadian city gives its name to a ten-minute screening test widely used for memory and thinking problems?

Montreal is where Ziad Nasreddine created the one-page, 30-point test in 1996; it is known as the MoCA, short for Montreal Cognitive Assessment.

After Alzheimer's, which type of dementia, caused by a series of strokes, is the second most common?

Vascular dementia follows strokes that restrict circulation, starving parts of the brain of oxygen and glucose.

Death in Alzheimer's is usually due not to the disease itself but to a cause such as which lung infection?

Pneumonia and infected pressure ulcers are the usual external causes, and falls are a further danger in the final stage.

Which fluid-filled cavities inside the brain grow larger as Alzheimer's shrinks the cortex around them?

Ventricles swell in step with the shrinkage, so the brain's outer layer thins while its hollow centre grows.

Loss of which junctions between nerve cells is an especially prominent correlate of dementia in Alzheimer's?

Synapses and the neurons they connect vanish unevenly: some cell types are badly hit and others spared, for reasons not yet understood.

In early Alzheimer's, tangles appear mainly in the inner part of which lobe of the brain?

Temporal lobe damage comes first, then the lesions spread through much of the brain; the occipital lobe at the back shrinks least.

What is the term for the simplified, patronising baby talk that some carers use with older adults?

Elderspeak can backfire: nursing home residents with dementia are more likely to resist help when staff talk to them this way.

Which Labour prime minister, who stepped down in 1976, later developed Alzheimer's disease?

Harold Wilson may already have sensed his excellent memory failing when he left office; he kept a low profile until his death in 1995.

Memantine, a drug for moderate to severe Alzheimer's, is thought to work by regulating which brain chemical?

Glutamate in excess can kill brain cells, so memantine partly blocks the receptors it acts on.

Which immune cells of the brain, able to engulf amyloid beta, drive much of the inflammation in Alzheimer's?

Microglia are the brain's resident macrophages; they recognise and swallow amyloid, which makes them central to clearing it.

What happened after the FDA approved the Alzheimer's drug aducanumab in 2021 despite its expert panel voting no?

Three advisers resigned in protest at approval without proof that the drug worked, and its maker abandoned it in January 2024.

Rare familial Alzheimer's, which strikes early and passes from parent to child, follows which pattern of inheritance?

Autosomal dominant mutations in one of at least three genes, coding for presenilin 1, presenilin 2 and APP, cause the familial form.

Which dementia approach, developed by Naomi Feil, respects a confused person's feelings instead of correcting them?

Validation therapy is the opposite of reality orientation, in which carers keep reminding people of their present situation.

Which term, coined by researcher Pauline Boss, covers grieving a relative who is alive but lost to dementia?

Ambiguous loss was first studied in the families of soldiers missing in action, another grief with no clear ending.

Which abstract expressionist painter began losing his memory in the late 1980s and was revealed to have Alzheimer's?

Willem de Kooning lived until 1997 and is noted for canvases such as Interchange and Police Gazette, both painted in 1955.

At a 1906 meeting in which German university town did Alois Alzheimer first present his landmark case?

Tübingen hosted the Southwest German Psychiatrists that November, when he described the brain changes and symptoms of presenile dementia.

Which term did the psychiatric manual DSM-5 adopt in 2013 in place of the word dementia?

Major neurocognitive disorder absorbed amnestic disorder as well, and the manual added a new list of mental domains for doctors to assess.

The APP gene, which codes for the precursor of amyloid beta, is found where in the human genome?

Chromosome 21 holds APP, a gene spread across 18 exons, and mutations in it are one cause of the inherited form of Alzheimer's.

Which term describes impaired ability to understand or form language, which can develop slowly in dementia?

Aphasia is a problem with language itself rather than the mechanics of speech, and brain tumours and infections can cause it too.