“Early Onset Alzheimer’s Disease: A Growing Concern Among Young Generations Worldwide”

What is Alzheimer’s and who affects it?

Professor Youssef Hashem, a specialist in brain and nervous system diseases who counts in a number of hospitals in Spain, said in an exclusive interview with Sky News Arabia:

• Alzheimer’s disease is a neurological disorder that begins with a gradual loss of memory and may lead to a loss of ability to carry out daily activities.
• Alzheimer’s disease is a form of dementia, and it can be severe enough to impair a person’s ability to perform daily tasks.
• “The disease mainly affects adults aged 65 and over, but that does not mean that it does not affect young age groups.”
• Alzheimer’s affects about 120 out of every 100,000 people between the ages of 30 and 64.
• “Having Alzheimer’s disease in a younger age group presents unique and significant financial and career challenges.”

By the numbers

Hashem refers to the latest statistics adopted in the United States regarding the global incidence of Alzheimer’s, which stated that:

• “10 percent of all injuries are among young people.”
• “According to American statistics, out of 5.5 million cases of Alzheimer’s disease of various degrees, 200,000 of them were of early age.”
• “There are many rare diseases that can affect the brain, including Alzheimer’s, which is a genetic disease that may affect 50 percent of members of the same family.”

60 million infections worldwide

And the specialist in diseases of the brain and nervous system explains, “The percentage of people with Alzheimer’s disease around the world is considered high, and according to the latest statistics, it is estimated at 60 million cases around the world.”

However, he considers that this figure is “inaccurate, because it does not include the statistics of the developing countries of the world.”