Good news about Alzheimer’s

Alzheimer's disease is uniquely terrifying because it gradually strips people of their identity. As Sean Rameswaram explains on Today, Explained, it starts with losing keys or forgetting an old friend's name, then progresses to losing the ability to navigate your own home, and eventually losing your relationships entirely. "It becomes a disease that is very cruel in the way it captures your sense of self." Roughly 7 million Americans and 50 million people worldwide have Alzheimer's, yet the treatment options have been shockingly thin compared to cancer—just a couple of drugs to slow it down, nothing to reverse it, and nothing close to a cure.

The hundred-year hypothesis that went wrong

To understand why, investigative journalist Charles Piller takes us back more than a century. When scientist Alois Alzheimer autopsied a woman with severe dementia, he found two kinds of proteins in her brain: plaques made of amyloid protein and tangles made of tau protein. The disease was defined as plaques, tangles, and dementia. For decades it remained a curiosity because few people lived long enough to develop it. But as vaccines, antibiotics, and treatments for heart disease and cancer extended lifespans into the 60s, 70s, and 80s, Alzheimer's became a major medical problem.