Scientists diagnosed the youngest case of Alzheimer's disease Neurologists at a memory clinic in China diagnosed Alzheimer's disease in a 19-year-old child.
The report made the youth the youngest person to be diagnosed with Alzheimer's in the world.
The male patient started experiencing memory loss around the age of 17, and cognitive decline worsened over the years.
Brain imaging revealed shrinkage in the hippocampus, which is associated with memory.
The cerebrospinal fluid reflected common markers of the most prevalent form of dementia.
Alzheimer's disease is commonly considered an elderly disease, and early-onset cases involving patients under the age of 65 make up 10% of all diagnoses.
In nearly all cases of individuals under 30 years of age, Alzheimer's is explained by pathological genetic mutations, classifying them as Familial Alzheimer's Disease.
The younger a person is when diagnosed, the higher the likelihood of it being the result of an inherited faulty gene.
However, researchers at Peking University in Beijing conducted a genome-wide study but did not find any of the usual mutations responsible for early-onset memory loss or any suspicious genes.
Prior to this diagnosis, the youngest Alzheimer's patient in China was 21 years old.
It was discovered that he carried a PSEN1 gene mutation, which leads to the accumulation of abnormal proteins in the brain, a common feature of Alzheimer's and the formation of toxic plaque deposits.
