A teenager in China has become the youngest patient on the planet to receive a possible diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease.
Doctors and researchers took the opportunity to study the case and have published their paper in a recent issue of the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease.
"The study proposed to pay attention to early Alzheimer's disease," said doctors from Capital Medical University in Beijing, according to a statement from the South China Morning Post.
The team behind the study said the boy has no family history of the disease or any other known cause of memory impairment. This makes his case even rarer.
The teenager, believed to be from Beijing, has suffered from symptoms of Alzheimer's disease since the age of 17.
He has experienced memory loss, difficulty concentrating, delayed reactions and difficulty reading.
Due to illness, the 19-year-old was forced to leave the last year of school.
The authors of the study stated:
"This is the newest case ever reported that meets the diagnostic criteria for Alzheimer's disease, without known genetic mutations."
Alzheimer's is a neurodegenerative disease that usually begins slowly and progressively worsens over time.
It usually presents at first as memory loss or brain fog, but leads to damage to the nervous system and brain-to-body communication.
Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia, and people with the disease have a short life expectancy, although this can vary from person to person, according to the New England Journal of Medicine.
Source: LadBible
