What is the cause of dementia?

Answer 1

The root cause of multi-infarct dementia is usually small blood clots that lodge in blood vessels in the brain, which results in the death of brain cells.

Answer 2

There are many causes of dementia. Dementia is a term for a group of symptoms. The common irreversible causes of dementia include Alzheimer's disease, Lewy Body dementia, Fronto-temporal dementia and Vascular dementia.

Some treatable causes of dementia are Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus (NPH).

Many conditions, such as metabolic diseases (which include hypothyroidism or anemia); nutritional deficiencies (such as B12 deficiency or Folate deficiency); strokes or head injuries, may cause dementia symptoms, especially in older people.

Answer 3

lack of certain nutrients and vitamins and old age

dementia is a degenaerative brain disease associated with aging. This alters memory, reasoning, personality and planning and motor skills. cognitive and behavioral skills are impaired. Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia that there is. The causes of alzheimer's are not known. It is believed that some forms of the disease is hereditary

Answer 4

There are several different types of dementia, including Alzheimer's Disease and Parkinson's Disease, so it isn't possible to attribute dementia as a whole to a single cause, as it is an umbrella term that covers a variety of deteriorations in brain function. However, the cause of dementia in general can usually be attributed to two main factors. The first is as a result of atheslosclerosis, which is the shrinking and hardening of the blood vessels in the brain which it needs to maintain a healthy blood supply and to continue functioning normally. With this blood supply being restricted, the brain's function is damaged and can lead to dementia- it is more common amongst people with high blood pressure, Type 1 Diabetes, and those who smoke. It can also occur as a result of a stroke, but this is not very common, and can also be genetically inherited, but again this is unusual. Alzheimer's Disease is caused by the loss of brain cells, and the shrinkage of the brain, at a faster rate than would happen during the normal process of ageing- nobody is quite clear why this happens, but it does result in a build-up of abnormal proteins in the brain which interfere with brain function. These abnormal proteins are known as 'plaques' and 'tangles', and interfere with the ability of neurotransmitters to relay signals from one part of the brain to another. But why they should form in the first place has yet to be discovered. Damaging clumps of proteins called 'Lewy Bodies' can be another cause of dementia- these proteins actually develop INSIDE brain cells and interfere with the ability of two important types of neurotransmitters called dopamine and acetylcholine, to relay signals between brain cells. Dementia as a result of Lewy Bodies is closely related to Parkinson's Disease. There is a form of dementia called Frontotemporal Dementia, which is the usual type of dementia suffered by younger victims of the disease (i.e. under about 65)- in a fifth of these cases, this happens because it is inherited, and it can be associated with Motor Neurone Disease (MND).

Dementia can be triggered by long-term alcohol abuse, head injury, smoking, drug abuse, as a side-effect of long-term use of certain prescription drugs, thyroid deficiency, lack of vitamin B12, and as already mentioned, stroke and Type 1 diabetes. But in most of these cases, it usually takes a long time to develop, it's not something that you start suffering from within a matter of weeks. These are the usual causes of athesclosclerotic dementia- the cause of the formation of the abnormal proteins that cause Alzheimer's and Parkinsons, however, is not yet known.

Answer 5

a group of symptons caused by damage to the brain

Answer 6

There are several different types/ types of dementia. What they all have in common is some insult that causes loss of brain function.