Preface

There are nearly 44 million people around the world who are diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. It is one of the most common diseases in Western Europe and the sixth leading cause of death in the United States. Every 67 seconds, someone in the United States develops Alzheimer's disease, while only 45% of these people are aware of this diagnosis. In the United Kingdom, the cost of Alzheimer's and dementia already exceeds £30 billion, while the global cost of Alzheimer's and dementia is estimated to be around \$600 billion. Similar to Alzheimer's, the incidence of Parkinson's disease increases with age. There are around 5 million people living with Parkinson's disease worldwide. The combined direct and indirect cost of Parkinson's, including medical treatment, social care, and lost income from an inability to work, is estimated to be nearly \$25 billion per year in the United States alone.

The most astonishing fact is that the cause of both Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, as well as other neurodegenerative maladies, is still unknown. Consequently, there is no effective treatment against these diseases. Medical diagnostics are primarily based on movement disorders and signs of memory loss. Such a drastic change in behavior is associated with neuron death, change in structures, and, consequently, the physiological functions of proteins.

Postmortem microscopic examination of organs and tissues of patients diagnosed with these severe maladies reveals amyloid plaques that contain long, unbranched, rod-like protein aggregates, known as amyloid fibrils. Therefore, it is concluded that these amyloid fibrils are associated with neurodegenerative diseases. However, there is a growing body of evidence suggesting that prefibrillar oligomers rather than fibrils are responsible for the onset and progression of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases.

This book provides a broad scope of research and clinical findings on amyloids. It also provides the most recent understanding of possible treatment of neurodegenerative diseases and is also an excellent summary of histological and physiological changes that are associated with amyloid diseases. I am convinced that this book will be interesting to a broad range of researchers ranging from graduate students to clinical practitioners who work in this very important and interesting area of biological research.

**II**

**Section 3**

of Alzheimer's Disease *by Sonia Villapol*

*by George H. Sack Jr.*

in Alzheimer's Disease

Onset and Development of Amyloidosis **133**

**Chapter 8 135**

**Chapter 9 157**

**Chapter 10 177**

**Chapter 11 189**

**Chapter 12 211**

Neuropathology of Traumatic Brain Injury and Its Role in the Development

*by Manuel F. Rosario-Alomar, Tatiana Quiñones-Ruiz, Dmitry Kurouski, Valentin Sereda, Eduardo DeBarros-Ferreira, Lorraine De Jesús-Kim, Samuel Hernández-Rivera, Dmitri V. Zagorevski, Leishla M. Cruz-Collazo,* 

Neuroprotective Function of Non-Proteolytic Amyloid-β Chaperones

Diabetes Mellitus and Amyloid Beta Protein Pathology in Dementia

*Parménides Guadarrama-Ortiz and Alejandra Martínez-Maldonado*

Inhibition of Protein Fibrillation by Hydrogen Sulfide

*Igor K. Lednev and Juan López-Garriga*

Pathophysiology of Amyloid Fibril Formation

*by Bhargy Sharma and Konstantin Pervushin*

*by Teresa Ponce-López, Andrew Michael Sorsby-Vargas, Alma Patricia Bocanegra-López, José Luna-Muñoz, Miguel Angel Ontiveros-Torres, Ignacio Villanueva-Fierro,* 

> **Dmitry Kurouski** Texas A&M University, Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, TX, USA

**1**

Section 1

Clinical Diagnostics of

Amyloidosis
