Neurodegenerative disease

Neurodegenerative disease
Normal brain on left contrasted with structural changes shown in brain on right of person with Alzheimer's disease, the most common neurodegenerative disease[1]
Specialty	Neurology, Psychiatry

A neurodegenerative disease is caused by the progressive loss of structure or function of neurons, in the process known as neurodegeneration. Such neuronal damage may ultimately involve cell death. Neurodegenerative diseases include amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, Huntington's disease, multiple system atrophy, tauopathies, and prion diseases. Neurodegeneration can be found in the brain at many different levels of neuronal circuitry, ranging from molecular to systemic. Because there is no known way to reverse the progressive degeneration of neurons, these diseases are considered to be incurable; however research has shown that the two major contributing factors to neurodegeneration are oxidative stress and inflammation.^[2][3][4][5] Biomedical research has revealed many similarities between these diseases at the subcellular level, including atypical protein assemblies (like proteinopathy) and induced cell death.^[6][7] These similarities suggest that therapeutic advances against one neurodegenerative disease might ameliorate other diseases as well.

Within neurodegenerative diseases, it is estimated that 55 million people worldwide had dementia in 2019, and that by 2050 this figure will increase to 139 million people.^[8]