Age Ex

  Pathology: Joints! Parts of the body’s anatomy where movements happen around them. Where a bone meets another bone there is a join to hold them together and to make sure of smooth mobility. In synovial joints, the most moveable joints of the body, the end of each bone is covered with articular cartilage that acts like a cushion and minimizes the friction between the bones during movements. With osteoarthritis, this tissue deteriorates over time, mostly in hand, knee, and hip, and can cause pain, stiffness, tenderness, and other related issues. Another type of arthritis is Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) which is rare compared to osteoarthritis. Like OA, RA is a chronic disease as well; however, the underlying cause is autoimmune inflammation of joints. In that case, the immune system attacks joint linings and causes stiff and swollen joints which can be painful. RA can negatively affect other organs and lead to increased risk of cardiovascular disease ( CVD ) or detrimental changes...

Pathology Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS is a motor neuron neurodegenerative disease that, like Alzheimer’s, is also associated with cognitive impairments as there are overlaps between ALS and frontotemporal degeneration. The causes for this disease are not exactly known. Although there are known genetic and environmental factors that lead to this disease, the interaction of genetic and environmental exposure can vary individually. You might ask how the interaction between the two leads to ALS. Well, there are certain genes (we carry them all along our lifetime) which are acted on by time and environmental exposure. These continue to have their effects until a certain point in time when the process of neurodegeneration begins and symptoms appear. Clinical presentations are divided into bulbar or spinal-onset and depend on the degree of upper motor neuron or lower motor neuron involvement. In the bulbar onset the disease affects speech and swallowing (dysarthria and dysphagia)...

Pathology: Since Parkinson’s Disease is the second most popular neurodegenerative disease in the world, most people probably have a general idea of the symptoms and behaviour of this illness. Therefore, let us save you some time and jump into the changes that lead to this disease. Beginning with the brain, there is a specific part of it called the ‘basal ganglia’ where changes start to impact a person and lead to the disease. The basal ganglia is located within the brain: the corpus callosum to be exact, and it is in touch with the thalamus to relay the incoming information to upper regions of the brain. The basal ganglia’s role in the body is to order/stop the execution of a movement. Yet, it is not as simple as it sounds; indeed, there are many pathways to be activated and chemicals to be released in order for the proper execution of movement to happen, but we are not to get deep into this here. In other words, the basal ganglia works like a “go, no-go” switch as it allows a moveme...

  Pathology: Lewy body Dementia (LBD) is a very complicated disease both in terms of pathology and treatment. This is the one type of disease that has both characteristics of Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. What distinguishes between the types of diseases is the timing of the appearance of symptoms. If symptoms of dementia happen before that of Parkinson’s, the situation is diagnosed as dementia with Lewy bodies or Lewy body dementia. On the contrary, Parkinson’s disease dementia is diagnosed when cognitive impairment happens after Parkinson’s disease. In essence, it is the formation of Lewy bodies and over time the abnormal accumulation of these bodies that leads to the clinical symptoms. These protein deposits often take place in pre-synaptic terminals that are responsible for neurotransmitter release and cycling. Symptoms of LBD can be divided to three levels of cognitive, behavioral, and physical. Cognitive symptoms can begin with presentation of non-amnestic cogni...