Contents



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

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,

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

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

> **Dmitry Kurouski** Texas A&M University,

> > TX, USA

Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics,

consequently, the physiological functions of proteins.

alone.

Parkinson's diseases.

biological research.
