Are Early-onset and late-onset forms of AD a single disease?

Since my wife was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease I tried to learn as much about it as I could. One thing that bothered me was the distinction made between those who get the disease before the age of 65 and those that get it after. Is there a real distinction in the nature of the disease other than age?

I will admit that I did not know you could get Alzheimer's Disease at the age of 57 like my wife and that Dr. Alzheimer's (over 100 years ago) first patient was 51. Then I found out you can get AD as early as your 30's. That is something that the general public does not know. They need to know that. They REALLY do!

So, should there distinction between early onset (before 65) and late onset(after 65)? I'd say no.

That change will help the public perception about it being an old persons disease and should help younger people who get AD the support they need. It was only recently that Social Security recognized Early Onset AD as a condition eligible for disability. I think it was about a year or so ago. Does anyone else see that as being nearly insane to have had to wait over 100 years before our government thought, 'Hey these people need help!"

The general public should know this: YOU CAN GET ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE BEFORE YOU GET "OLD".

Here is an article I read over at the ALZ forum.(good info at that site BTW)

Here is an excerpt and a link to the article:

Until recent times, the term Alzheimer disease referred exclusively to cases where the disease expressed itself before the age of 65. Alzheimer and Kraepelin themselves had defined the disease in this way. Indeed Alzheimer believed that in older people, dementia was the result of atherosclerosis. For decades thereafter, most investigators distinguished Alzheimer disease as a rare mid-life affliction from garden-variety senility. This distinction was blurred by the fact that even within a family, the disease would develop across a range of ages, from 50 to 70.

In the 1960s, Sir Martin Roth, Bernard Tomlinson, and Gary Blessed reported that the pathology of plaques and tangles also occurred across middle to old age.

But it was not until the 1970s that the New York pathologist Robert Katzman asserted that late-onset AD was no different from early-onset AD.

"The brilliant contribution Katzman made was that the general decline of cognition and life function, as well as the pathology, follow a similar pattern in late-onset, early-onset, and familial AD," notes neurologist Daniel Pollen at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester.

Since then, scientists have come to agree that the distinction between "presenile" and "senile" forms of AD dementia is obsolete.

The early-onset and late-onset forms are now seen as a single disease.

Alzheimer disease became a major public health issue in an aging society, and its occurrence in elderly people is what people typically mean today when they speak of Alzheimer disease. Indeed, in an ironic twist, almost no one thinks of AD as a disease that a younger person can get. The original form of Alzheimer disease has been largely forgotten, except by some researchers.—Gabrielle Strobel.


Early-Onset Familial AD: A Historic Discovery