brought an end to the destruction suffering and death. and to mark a new beginning of european cooperation. w. celebrates the 75th anniversary of the end of the 2nd war. on w. . hello and welcome to in good shape i love to swim it brings back all my childhood memories all those precious memories of my youth what about you do you feel the same but what if he would lose all those memories because you are affected by a disease called alzheimer's disease in colombia this disease affects anti of

villages. i caught her lives in the small village of in colombia but he doesn't really know where he is. where are we. where are we were at home. i condo doesn't even recognize himself in the mirror he has a rare genetic mutation which is associated with early onset alzheimer's disease. who you laughing with now what are you laughing at ok. i mean i don't know who is joking with. you that i'm concerned to me i began noticing it when he was about 45 now he's got alzheimer's just like his father did julie not only a man he cried when he got to the diagnosis. but as we're all very sad.

cargoes brothers have come over for lunch the outside of his mutation has been passed down through his family for generations you know his father died of it 2 of his brothers and one sister have also been affected they all developed the condition and usually early but around 40 i cut o's other siblings are currently healthy but there's a 50 percent chance they too have inherited the gene mutation and they also know that anyone with it seems to invariably develop alzheimer's. to be honest if we don't get it it will be like winning the lottery. alzheimer's disease today the condition has a name but for generations people here talked of a debilitating curse because so many families were affected word of a cluster of people falling prey to memory loss in bell mira and the surrounding villages made its way to francisco look ere at a university in their dean. at 1st we

were just curious we didn't know what to make of it all but one thing was clear to us that this was very significant. paris team set to work combing through the death certificates going back centuries talking to local priest some family members they were stunned by what they found is that this one had it this one died of it this one didn't this one did. they found that in a handful of villages over 25 extended families comprising over a 1000 people who are carrying the genetic mutation that leads to alzheimer's a distressing find but a unique opportunity for the 1st time the doctors can work with healthy people who they know are likely to develop alzheimer's nowhere else in the world is there such a concentration of cases perfect conditions for studying the disease and maybe even

finding a way of preventing it. we might be successful or we might fail either way both outcomes would be very interesting from a scientific point of view. what if we succeeded we could be on the road to finding an answer to alzheimer's. scientists believe that protein deposits build up between nerve cells in the brain eventually causing the cells to die they want to know whether these deposits can be impeded or even cleared they are microscopic but the damage they cause is all too visible here we have a healthy brain and it is easy to brain. and you can see the difference quite clearly the disease brain weighs 600 grams the healthy one weighs about twice that you can see at a glance what has happened to the patient. you know if we turn it over once again you can see the difference here we see

a cavity has developed while here it's all compact. but. back to an hour's drive from. the medical team regularly visits the affected families who are keen to support the research to help fight the disease any progress will come too late for a carde but it could help his son or even his grandchild who's due to be born soon . look it up i don't want to think about it our child will be healthy with god's help. there's currently no cure for alzheimer's this study in columbia has raised hopes of a breakthrough that's not happened yet but i'm 18 team still working on it i mean. i'd like to be there when that happens just for the family's sake but it could also lead to further studies into curing or preventing this disease that's the goal. but i'd love to be part of it if that's possible let's hope so. that when.

if those hopes are realized the project could help tip the scales in the fight against alzheimer's. as we've seen alzheimer's not only affects patients but their families as well how to care for patients and their families this is what i'm going to talk about. from the journey alzheimer's society and i'm going to turn out. elemis was the ultimate disease is also called a family disease why is that. people where the mentor more and more help when the mentor progresses and the family members organize every day life they make

appointments with the doctor. they care for activities they care for care for financial matters and many more things. at the same time maybe they go to work maybe they have own families with little children so. they need lots of commitment and they don't have really much time for themselves and so they are under high social pressure physical psychological pressure yeah so you see a lot of affected people's so what's the main problem. relatives have problems in dealing with the changing behavior off the pace. because this happens when the mentor progresses right so when you feel some memory loss there's a big question is it just a mild forgetfulness always it also has to seize. it all seemed quite harmless at 1st dabble village golf began to experience memory

problems a little later she was diagnosed with early stage alzheimer's i'm funny in the beginning i was often very sad and down but then i realised well it has to happen at some point and life has to go on you can't change that it is what it is it's like. that was 18 months ago the 70 year old can't always find the right words or remember what she wants to buy when she's out shopping but fine large she's still mom just to get by. sometimes i have problems with my friends for example or forgetting things that happen sometimes. but nothing really bad i don't forget to turn off the tap or anything like that. so touch wood i haven't done anything serious yet.

but babble builds doff knows that things won't stay like this she used to be a nurse and later manage a retirement home so she knows that her memory problems will increase. but no one can say how quickly the disease will progress and how severe it will become. i don't know what things will be like by the end of the year i'd like to visit the baltic on holiday. and maybe somewhere else. i definitely want to do that. and i'll do that sooner rather than later. today she's meeting susanna sachs old from the german alzheimer's society recently bevel village store got involved with the organization it gives her the opportunity to compare her experiences with those of other people with the disease several bills to offer likes to stay active. the german alzheimer's society works to improve the lives of people with dementia the organization helps the patients themselves and

their families. we've put together information online if someone gets to mention before the age of 65 it can be especially difficult for the family if children are still at home yeah. it's important that people make provision for the time when they can no longer cope alone that will build stoff has already done that. and i made a plan with a friend who i've known for a very very long time i work together with him in the hospital. he's the boss there now if something happens to me he'll see to it that i get a. place in a nursing home. before that it's good to have something like that that. there is no cure for alzheimer's patients and their families have to adapt to the disease as best they can one of the worst things is not knowing when your condition

might suddenly deterioration. i think everyone fears that that's why it's important to make the most of each day. that. shouldn't be so that's pointless. and you need to meet up with other people and. that's another reason that she got involved with the alzheimer's society bevel village store hopes to meet new people to go out and do things with. it i've always liked to dance but 1st you have to find someone to go with and i don't have a partner even if you have a nice bunch of friends none of them go dancing with me. so if you happen to come to berlin and like to dance with this stuff feel free to contact us we heard a lot about the german alzheimer's society so what actually do you do in this

association how do you help patients and families we ourselves help organization and as the german i'm a society we are the federal aviation off 230 out some associations in germany and to gather our main aim is to improve the life and the life quality of persons with dementia and their families and what is your advice if a patient would phone you or would contradict you. it depends on the situation he or she is in at this moment so. people that are calling us are mostly the relatives and they are asked for help because. behavior persons with dementia is changing. when he or she has a dementia and this causes lots off conflicts so you giving advice to both to patients and the family of course right and it's not always alzheimer's patients

losing his memory it's the other forms of dementia so to do advice in this direction as well yes we do when someone notices the symptoms of maybe dimentia. memory problems for example we. we advised to go to the doctor because just the medical examination can provide clarity at this moment i mean time is disease is life changing when for both for the patient and for the family so what kind of values can you really give the family liked to adept with a situation in which you think yeah to death with this situation to talk about the situation and to think about the future because dementia progresses. so one of the main problems in everyday life is it isn't really like financial matters on my driving license oh. yeah most problems

are caused by the changing behaviors so some persons with them and sometimes get angry or loud or they still want to drive even though this isn't possible anymore some have the feeling of being robbed and accuse their relatives and handling those mistrust is really hard it's a heavy task so the. disease is not curable right now and it's very hard to treat anyway so one of your advise you confuse try to adapt to the next situation but is it really possible to adapt to this kind of serious illness yes it is by that is a process this process took a lot of time and. the family members. have to inform or where we went for holidays 2 months ago and then i i don't take this personal and react less emotional maybe but it is hard it stays hard

and there will be days where my patience breaks because i'm going to be asked the same thing 10 times in 5 minutes not long ago there was hope on the horizon for alzheimer's patients there was a drug which was a little antibody but the studies were stopped. we sent our chief reporter peter shots to find out what is new in the treatment of alzheimer's. here at the leipzig still the apes are a source of fascination for visitors. perhaps that's because our primate relatives are so similar to us. they laugh they play games and they express affection much like we do. they also get many of the same illnesses like colds diabetes and even depression but one condition they don't get is all timers. why is that did something go wrong in the evolution of the human brain.

neurologist thomas our friend heads the power flex institute of brain research in leipsic he spent the last 40 years studying out simers disease. this host. craig you might have a certain genetic disposition which makes it more likely that you'll develop alzheimer's. but it seems that even then the onus only develops if on top of this predisposition other factors come into play such as environmental influences and possibly stress. if there's a rise a bit in this place for. as the human brain develops certain areas became particularly pronounced this led to new abilities that are unique to human beings. language is one of them. another is our self-awareness our sense of our own existence. and our ability to

process memory is it's precisely these abilities that are affected by alzheimer's memory is the 1st to go followed by language then the individual self-awareness changes and in the end is lost completely. numerous possible explanations for. this phenomenon have been proposed it's often seemed that a potential treatment was within reach but to this day there's been no decisive breakthrough. as those. one of the reasons for that is that we don't up sufficient understanding of the functions that are affected by alzheimer's such as language of memory and self-awareness even in the brains of healthy individuals. once you realize that you can appreciate how difficult it is to find out why such processes are being disrupted. when you don't fully understand how they work normally.

and. studies have focused in particular on 2 protein deposits in the brain beta amyloid plaques and neuro fiber larry tangles made up of a protein called tau. both occur naturally in the body but in alzheimer's patients they disrupt the communication between the nerve cells causing them to die that was long thought to be the cause of the condition but it's quite possible that these plaques are merely a side effect or a consequence of alzheimer's. so the challenge remains to find the root causes of alzheimer's i would not assume that the amyloid deposits of the calls. the scientists at the palace lexis institute study tissue samples and neurons there are particularly interested in 2 questions what regulates the life cycle of nerve cells in the brain and what might interfere with it and what roles do genes play the researchers found that all timers patients exhibit increased numbers of neurons

with genetic abnormalities but is that a cause or an effect of the disease it's still unclear. thomas aren't believes that some people are born with a predisposition for other timers what is certain is that changes occur in the brain 20 or 30 years before the. symptoms of alzheimer's appear in some cases perhaps even earlier. this leads to the question of whether the disease could be arrested at this early stage but how do you detect affected people if they don't display any symptoms. present these are going to be your model for this is where you turn to biomarkers. this is an area of research that seeks to find biomarkers that can help you to identify patients that are particularly at risk of developing this disease. his team came up with a blood test for rapid diagnosis which is being developed by a group of biotech companies it focuses on the early phase of alzheimer's before

cognitive symptoms appear scientists believe that's where the key to the disease and to potential treatments lies with. realistically have to assume that on the basis of what we know right now we would have to wait at least another generation maybe 30 or 40 years before we have a really effective treatment that addresses the causes of the disease if indeed that's even possible. under doubts about. perhaps we'll never be able to intervene in the process of alzheimer's disease the way that we would like to. buy the vision . of what really happens in nerve cells in the brain what role is played by genetic variations and environmental factors these things need to be better understood perhaps then we'll know why we're so different from our closest animal relatives when it comes to timers. no adequate therapy for the next 30 to 50 years so it's very important that we take care of all alzheimer's patients and

there are lessons today to make their lives a little bit easier and you're trying to do this for example with discussion groups or did this because family members get to know their other family members that experience the thing things in their day to day life. and they learn that they aren't alone with this disease and they. they get tips and hints from the other families and yeah i hear how they try to deal with some conflicts in everyday life you have a lot of conflicts in the families with the patients and their relatives like aggressive behavior so how do you cope with that aggressive behavior caused by. the fact that persons with the men to assess a situation differently than their family members and they insist on their opinion

when the family members also insist that different opinion then we have those conflicts and the relatives are the only one that can change those situations so that they can try to react patiently they can try to take the fear persons with the mention feel seriously and yeah maybe calm down the situation especially in the beginning of the disease lot of fear anger and grief so how can you cope with all the dimensions. 1st of all of the listen. try to find out what in this situation is really. makes clear off the person with dementia or the family member and so we also can try to find out what could be relieving which could be helpful

at that moment i mean it's a very special disease alzheimer's disease it's a very emotional disease so many of the caregivers simply burn hold. given care so how can you prevent a brain know. with help and support and with help and support from the beginning of the disease on. because so we can somehow counteract the overwork or the own illness the caregivers at some point it may not be possible to keep the outsiders patient inside the family so you have to give them away to a nursing home or professional caregivers and this is a big huge step because address is not a conflict so so what's your advice to. the families don't make this decision easily easily they make it when there's no alternative anymore their conflict stays of course and again. it helps to go to

a self-help group to exchange with other. relatives or to use a counseling service or something like that would you like to know if you later in your life will get alzheimer's disease you know i don't want to know it because there's no there's no adequate therapy right now i don't want to know if i'm going to get dementia and i do understand this. if you've got any questions you like me to ask oh experts the shooter right meaning they're. in good shape you know we can help show on d w that covers many aspects of health can we. what's new in medical treatment nutrition fitness. in-depth with specialists and opportunities to patients and questions so get in touch with. many people our frayed if they have relatives with alzheimer's disease that they

will get all simas themselves so so what you suggest. it is important to know that . most of the. diseases are not caused by genetic reasons. 8. the highest risk factor you could say and if you want to do something. guarding mention it is important to yeah to have adequate exercise a balanced diet to stay active socially. to treat known diseases like treasure are something like that thank you so much for this very interesting talk on this very difficult matter and that's it for today see you next week and until then let's all try to stay in good shape. when.

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