Alzheimer’s Disease and Mild Cognitive Impairment

Alois Alzheimer reported a “peculiar” dementia in a 51-year-old woman at the meeting of South- West Germany Psychiatrists in Tübingén on November 3 and 4, 1906. Alzheimer’s seminal contribution was to correlate the cognitive and behavioral features of the disorder with the histopathological findings of “miliary foci” and neurofibrillary change in the cerebral cortex following the woman’s death at age 55 years (1). On the 100th anniversary of Alzheimer’s report of the disease that now bears his name, it is appropriate to review the approach to the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the most common cause of dementia in older adults.