The tangled story of Alois Alzheimer

In 1907, Bavarian psychiatrist Alois Alzheimer, who is considered to be a founding father of neuropathology, was first to describe the main neuropathologic characteristics of the peculiar disease in the brain of a woman showing progressive dementia when she was in her early 50s. Using a newly developed Bielschowsky's silver staining method, Alzheimer observed degenerating neurons with bundles of fibrils (neurofibrillary tangles) and miliary foci of silver-staining deposits scattered over the cortex (senile plaques). In 1910 Emil Kraepelin (Alois Alzheimer's superior) coined the term "Alzheimer's disease" to distinguish the presenile form of dementia from the more common senile variant. Alzheimer's findings were followed up, and soon a number of reports of similar cases appeared in the literature. During the time, both pathological hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease became the gold standard for post-mortem diagnosis of the disease. One hundred years later, dementia of Alzheimer's type is considered to be one of the most devastating illnesses of old age. Despite intensive research the cause of the disease still remains elusive (Fig. 2, Ref. 17).