Alzheimer’s disease is a type of dementia. It is named after German pathologist Alois Alzheimer, who discovered what is believed to be the distinctive feature of the disease–plaques and other protein deposits–in the brain of a deceased patient in 1906.
In the 1980s, a protein called amyloid beta (Aβ) was identified as the main component of the plaques. This led to the “amyloid hypothesis,” which suggests that a primary cause of Alzheimer’s disease is Aβ clumps in brain tissue. The amyloid hypothesis, although controversial, has been the basis of most Alzheimer’s disease research for decades.
