Sahana Sitaraman in The Scientist:
In 1906, a 50-year-old woman in Germany died of a mysterious illness. Before her death, she presented with a combination of symptoms that stumped doctors—progressive memory loss, paranoia, confusion, and aggression. A closer look into her brain post-mortem revealed abnormal clumps and tangled bundles of fibers. This was the first documented case of Alzheimer’s disease, described in detail by Alois Alzheimer, a clinical psychiatrist and neuroanatomist.1 His characterization of the disease pathology is still used for diagnosis of this neurodegenerative disorder. Scientists now know that the clumps are plaques formed by the protein fragment amyloid-beta (Aβ) and the tangles are abnormal accumulations of the protein tau within neurons.
More here.
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