Alzheimer's disease: an animated, cited guide

This page needs JavaScript for its animations. The outline and key answers are below, and every claim in the full version carries a numbered citation.

Not medical advice. Alzheimer's Companion is an educational synthesis of published literature. It does not replace a clinician.

What is in it

What Alzheimer's is Dementia versus Alzheimer's, who it affects, the numbers.
The brain that forgets Where it starts and how it spreads, stage by stage.
Amyloid, animated From one protein cut to a plaque, and the debate about it.
Tau and the tangle How a scaffold protein turns into a tangle and spreads.
Microglia and the lost synapse Inflammation, pruning, and the strongest link to memory loss.
Genes and inheritance APOE, the dominant families, Down syndrome, and what a test means.
Twenty years before symptoms The biomarker cascade, in order.
Stages and symptoms From no symptoms to severe dementia, function by function.
Diagnosis and biomarkers Criteria, scans, spinal fluid, blood tests and screening tools.
The differential Delirium, vascular, Lewy body, frontotemporal and reversible causes.
Cholinesterase inhibitors and memantine Inside the synapse, and what the benefit really is.
Anti-amyloid antibodies over time Lecanemab and donanemab over 18 months, ARIA and the debate.
Beyond memory Agitation, mood, psychosis and sleep, and the drug cautions.
Lowering the risk The 14 modifiable risk factors and what trials show.
Living with dementia and caregiving Planning, safety, caregivers and the end of life.
Nursing care Assessment, giving the medicines, communication, documentation.
Toward a cure The pipeline, prevention trials, and the evidence for each route.
History and people From Auguste Deter in 1901 to the antibodies.
Flashcards and mnemonics Flip cards by topic.
Quiz Questions with explanations.
Glossary Every term, searchable.
Sources Every reference behind the app.

Part 4 · Living, caring, preventing

Toward a cure

Researchers are trying to interrupt the disease at every step, from the first protein cut to the loss of synapses. Pick a route to drop a barrier at its target and see what the best evidence found. Every route carries an evidence label, and failures are shown as plainly as successes.

Where could we intervene?

Timeline

Schematic, not to scale. The flow beyond the barrier is a picture of the trial result, not a measurement.

Route	Target	Evidence	Best result so far

Prevention trials: treating before symptoms

These trials give a drug to people who have amyloid or a disease-causing gene but no symptoms yet. The timeline runs from the first readout to the last expected one; solid dots are published results, hollow dots are estimated completion dates from the trial registry.

Years

Dates are publication years for results and registry estimates for trials still running.

The 2025 pipeline in numbers

Share of the pipeline by drug type

Counts from the annual pipeline reviews of clinicaltrials.gov.

Open questions

What the next trials test

Question	Trials	Expected

No therapy cures Alzheimer's disease today.The approved antibodies that clear amyloid slow decline modestly in early disease; they do not stop it or restore what is lost, and no drug has yet been shown to prevent symptoms in people who do not have them. A cure would need to halt neurodegeneration and possibly restore lost function. ^{43,465,479,496}