What is Alzheimer’s disease? Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia, affecting around 500,000 people in theUK. This information sheet outlines the symptoms and causes of Alzheimer’s disease, and describeswhat treatments are currently available.

Genetic inheritanceMany people fear that they may inherit Alzheimer’sdisease. Scientists are currently investigating thegenetic background to Alzheimer’s. We do know that there are a few families where there is a very clear inheritance of the disease fromone generation to the next. This is often in familieswhere the disease appears relatively early in life. In the vast majority of cases, however, the effect of inheritance seems to be small. If a parent or otherrelative has Alzheimer’s disease, your own chancesof developing the disease are only a little higherthan if there were no cases of Alzheimer’s in theimmediate family.