A 19-year-old Chinese teenager has become the youngest patient in the world to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, after the young man suffered symptoms for two years, including memory loss, difficulty concentrating, delayed reactions and difficulty reading.
When doctors from Peking Medical University visited him, the surprise was that he couldn’t even remember what he had eaten the day before.
The young man was forced to leave his studies even though he was in the final year of high school.
Tests and scans revealed that his hypothalamus (Thalamus), an area of the brain that plays an important role in cognitive abilities, had shrunk.
The teenager also had damage to the temporal lobe and high levels of a protein called tau, which are hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease.
Doctors were surprised to discover that this patient had no family history of the disease, and even lacked the genetic mutation usually seen in people with Alzheimer’s disease.
This disease usually affects people who are 65 years of age or older.
Diagnosis before the age of 65 accounts for approximately 5-10% of all Alzheimer’s cases.
Previously, the youngest person diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease was a 21-year-old with a genetic mutation.
Many early diagnoses of the disease were made in young people, such as Jordan Adams, of Worcestershire, England, when he was 24 years old.
Daniel Bradbury, also from England, was diagnosed when he was 30 and later died.
The Australian, Rebecca Doig, was also diagnosed, at the age of 31, and she also died, according to the website “.E24 News“.
