History of Alzheimer’s Disease

Korea is a rapidly aging society, which is currently unprecedented in the world. Degree of aging in society can be divided into an aging society (7%), aged society (14%) and super-aged society (21%) based on the proportion of people aged 65 years or older. Moreover, Korea is projected to enter a super-aged society in the next 10 years because this aging phenomenon was dramatically intensified, following the aging population already established in 2000 (Statistics Korea, Results of specific funeral population estimation, 2005. 1). Such a trend in Korea can be considered extraordinarily steep, as compared to 154 years in France, 97 years in UK, 94 years in USA, and 36 years in Japan, which is close to our country. As our society is rapidly aging, the number of patients with dementia shows a significant increasing trend and the new dementia patients appear at a rate of five people per hour. The direct medical expense burden from the disease of dementia itself, and accompanying socioeconomic indirect burden are also exponentially increasing. To reduce direct and indirect expenses burden throughout society, as well as to improve an individual patient’s quality of life, early diagnosis of dementia, effective treatment, and continuous follow-up management need to be addressed urgently. Delay in the onset of dementia by 2 years owing to appropriate treatment would diminish the prevalence of dementia by approximately 20%.1 Dementia could be likened to a philosophical death, as opposed to biological death. Forgetting personal life history and difficulty in retaining even fragmentary reminiscences of life, could result in a great deal of pain to those who share a collective memory of the past. History of Alzheimer’s Disease