One among every four senior citizens over 80 is suffering from the serious degenerative brain disease, dementia or Alzheimer's, but old people's carers are not sufficiently informed about it to know how to treat it, experts in the field told a medical conference last week.

"When the old fail to remember things or when they ask the same question repeatedly, their carers should think about the risk of dementia," said Professor Zhang Mingyuan of the Shanghai Mental Health Centre.

He was speaking at the World Senile Dementia Day Conference held by Eisai China Inc last week.

Beyond ageing

Dementia is the collective name for progressive degenerative brain diseases and syndromes which affect memory, thinking, behaviour and emotion. And Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause of dementia.

Symptoms of the disease may include: loss of memory, difficulty in finding the right words or understanding what people are saying, difficulty in performing previously routine tasks and personality and mood changes.

Dementia is not a normal part of ageing. It knows no social, economic, ethnic or geographical boundaries. Although each person will experience dementia in their own way, eventually those affected are unable to care for themselves and need help with all aspects of daily life.

If a family member has a normal form of Alzheimer's disease, the risk of close relatives also eventually having it is around three times higher than the risk for a person of a similar age who has no family history of the disease.

In addition, women are more at risk of the disease than are men. And the poorly educated person is more at risk than those with a good education.

There is no cure for Alzheimer's disease or for most other causes of dementia. Researchers are still at the stage of developing drugs that will slow down the progress of the disease, at least in some cases. But there are a number of drug treatments that can help some people with Alzheimer's disease.

The currently available treatments can slow down the advance of the disease in some cases for periods of between six and 18 months.

Not enough is known about the causes of Alzheimer's for any preventative measures to be recommended.

Genes are thought to play a part in the development of most cases of Alzheimer's. In rare cases, abnormal genes actually cause the disease. Much more commonly, genes are believed only to contribute to a person's susceptibility to the disease. It seems that, at least in some cases, factors in the environment may be necessary to trigger the illness.

More awareness

Medical experts have called on society in general and carers in particular to increase their awareness of preventing dementia among aged citizens and to give early treatment.

"Most Chinese still have the big family style with three generations living together, so it's harder to detect the early symptoms in senior citizens,' said Zhang.

In Western countries, the old people usually lead independent lives and have to pay the household bills or drive a car by themselves. So it was easy to detect the symptoms if they failed to cope with such tasks.

"But in China, grandparents take a walk with grandchildren. It's hard to say if the old help the young or the young lead the old," said Zhang.

Meanwhile, families find it hard to accept the Chinese term for "dementia" because they think it has a negative and insulting meaning.

As a result, patients usually don't turn to get medical help until the disease has developed into a quite serious stage such as incontinence.

Recommended Hospitals:

Huashan Hospital (Friday afternoon)

Zhongshan Hospital (Wednesday morning)

Huadong Hospital (Tuesday afternoon)

Ruijin Hospital (Wednesday afternoon)

(Shanghai Star   September 25, 2003)