Alzheimer’s Disease Research Paper Essay Example for Free

Alzheimer’s Disease Research Paper Essay Abstract: Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia in elderly individuals. Currently, 4.5 million people in the United States approximately have Alzheimer’s disease. (Burns) Alzheimer’s disease presents the victim with a sharp decline in memory, language, visuospatial perception, executive functioning and decision-making. Because this disease is so harsh on people’s personality, behavioral and psychiatric symptoms are frequently present in Alzheimer’s disease. The impact Alzheimer’s disease has on health care is significant and estimated to cost $100 billion dollars per year and predicted to rise as it is a demand to find new medication and the number of Alzheimer’s disease individual rise. (Burns) There is medication available, however there is currently no cure, the medications that are given have symptoms that do not alter the negative progression of the disease. Alzheimer’s disease is defined as progressive, degenerative disorder that attacks the brain’s nerve cells and neurons resulting in a loss of memory, thinking, language skills, and behavioral changes. (Burns) Alzheimer’s disease is characterized by cognitive dysfunction, psychiatric symptoms, behavioral disturbances, and difficulty performing daily activities. Alzheimer’s disease is currently the 6th leading cause of death in the United States and presently 4.5 million Americans are living with it. Alzheimer’s disease is the leading cause of dementia in elder individuals. (Burns) Even though there is no cure for Alzheimer’s disease, the health care costs are extremely high, being just over 100 billion dollars per year. The hopefulness of the development of a cure or new therapies becomes more desperate every year for new advances in the future. (Burns) The symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease in every individual vary; the disease can be extremely severe and other times slightly mild. Because Alzheimer’s disease is progressive it advances as time goes on, it starts off as the individual becomes forgetful and looses a small amount of memory and continues to severe dementia and loosing memory completely. The cognitive dysfunction of a person with Alzheimer’s disease includes memory loss, language difficulties, and executive dysfunction, which consists of a loss of higher level planning and intellectual coordination skills. (Burns) The psychiatric symptoms and behavioral disturbances can be anything from depression and agitation to hallucinations. The psychiatric symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease can also be collectively termed as non-cognitive symptoms. (Burns) The general symptoms of memory loss is always the first symptom of a majority of the cases of Alzheimer’s disease. The gradual onset of memory loss has the same symptoms as normal aging, because ageing shows symptoms of some dementia as well, this can understandably become confusing to diagnose, and however Alzheimer’s disease is not a normal part of aging. (Burns) The onset of Alzheimer’s disease is sly and emerges with a mild loss of memory and continues on with difficulty in finding the right word to go along with sentences. A diagnoses occurs only when the symptoms interfere significantly with everyday life such as social and work functions. Personal and emotional changes within the individual are very common for people who have Alzheimer’s disease. Major depressive disorder occurs in 20-35% of cases, while anxiety reaches 15-25% of people who have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. (Burns) Every 67 seconds someone in the United States develops Alzheimer’s disease. Women seem to get his the hardest with this disease. In a women’s 60’s, the estimated risk for developing Alzheimer’s is 1 in 6 and two thirds of Americans with Alzheimer’s disease are women. (Burns) Not only are women more likely to have Alzheimer’s, women are also more likely to be caregivers of those with Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s disease leads to nerve cell death and tissue loss throughout the brain. Over time, the brain shrinks dramatically because of this, affecting nearly all of its functions, especially the memory. The cortex of the brain  shrivels up and damages areas involved in thinking, planning, and remembering. (Fackelmann) Shrinkage is especially threatening in the hippocampus, which is the area that forms new memories. The ventricles, which are the fluid-filled spaces within the brain, grow larger to fill in the places that have shriveled up. The tissue within an Alzheimer’s patient has fewer nerve cells and synapses than a healthy brain. Nerve cells and synapses are what carry messages throughout the brain they are crucial to the biological computations that make up perception and thought. The dead nerve cells contain tangles, which are made up of twisted strands of another protein. The small clumps can clock the synapse and can activate the immune system to trigger inflammation. (Fackelmann) The plaques and tangles spread throughout the cortex in a predictable pattern as Alzheimer’s disease progresses. The rate of the progression of the tangles and plaques within the brain varies significantly. (Fackelmann) People with Alzheimer’s disease live an average of 8 years, but some individuals can survive up to 20 years. In a severely advanced Alzheimer’s disease most of the cortex is severely damaged. (Fackelmann) This is where the brain had shrunk dramatically because of widespread cell death. In this stage, individuals lose their ability to communicate, recognize their family and loved ones, and to care for themselves in their daily activities. The cause of Alzheimer’s disease is unknown, however researchers have linked several risk factors with Alzheimer’s disease such as an increasing age, family history, head injury (anti-inflammatory drugs have been associated as a reduction of risk), depression, hypertension, high cholesterol, low physical and cognitive activity, diabetes, diseases that cause mutations of chromosomes 1, 14, and 21, ApoE genotype, and individuals diagnosed with down syndrome eventually develops the neurological symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. (Fackelmann) The genetic contribution to Alzheimer’s disease is a risk. The risk for the first degree of relatives of people with the disease is estimated at 10-40% higher than unrelated people. (Whalley) The fact that monozygotic twins (twins who share 100% of their genetic material) have a higher concordance rate than dizygotic twins indicates that there is a significant genetic  component to Alzheimer’s disease. (Whalley) Because of the risks stated above, researches suggest that environmental factors are also a contribution to the diagnoses of Alzheimer’s disease. Environmental factors is confirmed by the fact that the strongest association is not true across all races; 50% of white patients with Alzheimer’s disease do not carry an e4 allele (ApoE genotype), which is a significant risk in getting Alzheimer’s disease. (Whalley) The cure for Alzheimer’s disease is uncertain and is mainly focused on therapeutic treatments that help some dementia and other symptoms associated with it. For clinical reasons, non-drug interventions should be used initially, especially if the symptoms are not causing stress or placing the individual at risk to themselves or to others. If non-drug remedial interventions have no effect, cholinesterase inhibitors are the conventional drug treatment of choice for Alzheimer’s disease. Cholinesterase inhibitors have a moderate beneficial symptoms associated with the drug. The drug modifies symptoms in the minority of people with Alzheimer’s disease because it is nicely tolerated in the majority of individuals. Memantine is a drug that is a glutamatergic antagonist that trials have found effective in individuals that have severe dementia, however it is restricted to those in clinical trials. Cholinesterare inhibitors and memantine are known to produce little identifiable improvements in the activities of daily life. Non-drug approaches are not effective in helping memory loss, even though there are therapeutic techniques that help retain memory and can offer support for people with mild dementia. Sources Burns, A. Alzheimers Disease. British Medical Journal, 338, 467-471. Retrieved June 2, 2014 Fackelmann, K. Forcasting Alzheimers Disease. Science News, 149, 312-313. Retrieved June 2, 2014 Whalley, L. Genetics of Alzheimers Disease. British Medical Journal (clinical research edition), 1556. Retrieved June 2, 2014

Peer Pressure and Drinking Essay -- Peer Pressure Essays

High school is normally the time when teenagers begin to dabble in the world of alcohol – to discover their limits and develop habits and this experimentation carries over into college. That is the norm and its not a bad thing, but of course there are a few exceptions. In high school I never went to a single party, was never invited to one, and barely ever even heard about them. It was something that none of my close friends were a part of and the thought of drinking never really crossed my mind. I was so busy with my school work, my job, and the cross country team that I didn’t have much spare time, and when I did I wanted to relax and hang out with my friends. My parents raised me in the faith of the Catholic Church and this background gave me a strong moral base. I always laugh and I have fun doing the simplest things so it was easy for me to find activities to be a part of besides drinking. It was only the summer after high school graduation that I began to fe el peer pressured to drink and the fact that I am always sober started to make me feel a bit isolated. When high school began, none of my close friends had ever drunk alcohol or had any interest in it, but as years went by, more and more of them began to try alcohol. Drinking is a personal choice and I had no problem with them experimenting, but by the end of my senior year some of my friends began to try and convince me to try it myself. Everyone knew that I am conservative when it comes to that sort of thing and people joked about me going crazy once I got to college and was no longer governed by my parent’s strict rules. Unbeknownst to them, this kind of talk repeated over and over, though I always denied it, began to make me feel curious. However I couldn... ...ound. So I always try to make everyone feel included, although I am still one of the more quiet people in the world. Lastly, my parents have taught me to work hard for the rewards that I gain. This has always been a major driving factor in my desire to do well with my schoolwork and in sports. I know that if I work hard enough I can do well and if I don’t get the results I want, it is no one’s fault except my own. With regards to drinking, I know that my parents would have been disappointed in me if I made the decision to start drinking in high school. When I take into account all the wonderful lessons they have taught me and all the love they have given me, it never made sense to make them unnecessarily upset. As clichà © as these things sound, I honestly know that these morals have helped guide me through my life and helped me make the best decisions I could.

Dell Computers: a Case Study in Low Inventory

When managers discuss low inventory levels, Dell is invariably discussed. Hell, even I've mentioned Dell on this site. So why all the commotion? Has their low inventory Really  helped out that much? In short, yes. This article is primarily going to discuss how much it helped. This article will not discuss how they achieved such high inventory turns using a state of the art just in time inventory system. Reasoning behind need for lower inventory The first thing that needs to be discussed is why low inventory has such a great effect on Dell's overall performance. The reason is quite simple: computers depreciate at a very high rate. Sitting in inventory, a computer loses a ton of value. As Dell's CEO, Kevin Rollins, put it in an interview with Fast Company: â€Å"The longer you keep it the faster it deteriorates — you can literally see the stuff rot,† he says. â€Å"Because of their short product lifecycles, computer components depreciate anywhere from a half to a full point a week. Cutting inventory is not just a nice thing to do. It's a financial imperative. † We're going to assume that the depreciation is a full point per week (1%/week) and use that to determine how much money high inventory turns can save Dell. This means that for every 7 days a computer sits in Dell's warehouses, the computer loses 1% of its value. Ok, now that we know how much Dell loses for each day, let's take a look at some of Dell's data over the past 10 years that I pulled from www. hemanufacturer. com What I got from this was the inventory turns. An inventory turn, as this website successfully describes it, is â€Å"cost of goods sold from the income statement divided by value of inventory from the balance sheet†. Typically, this is turned into a value showing how many days worth of inventory a firm has by dividing inventory turnover by 365. I divided the inventory turnover by 52 in order to show how many weeks worth of inventory Dell holds. Key point to notice here is that Dell was carrying over 10 weeks worth of inventory in 1993. By 2001, Dell was carrying less than 1 week's worth of inventory. This essentially means that inventory used to sit around for 11 weeks and now it sits around for less than 1 week. So what does this mean for Dell? Remember, computers lose 1 percent of their value per week. This isn't like the canned food industry where managers can let their supplies sit around for months before anyone bats an eye. Computers aren’t canned goods, and as Kevin Rollins of Dell put it, computers â€Å"rot†. The longer a computer sits around, the less it is worth. That said, due to depreciation alone, in 1993 Dell was losing roughly 10% per computer just by allowing computers to sit around before they were sold. In 2001, Dell was losing less than a percent. Based on holding costs alone, Dell reduced costs by nearly 9%. Since 2001, Dell has continueed to lower inventory. Looking at their latest annual reports, day's inventory has dropped by approximately a day. Hopefully this article provided you with a practical example that demonstrates the positive effects lower inventory can have on a firm's overall costs. For more information regarding lawyers in the Texas area, check out Dallas Fort Worth trucking accident attorney. For more basic information regarding holding costs, please read A Simplified Look at the Pros and Cons of Inventory.

The Nurse Leader s Responsibility Essay - 1608 Words

Today’s nurse leaders practice in very complex environments. Managers are asked to function in a way that presents their professional moral courage while providing an environment that is conducive to safe, quality patient care. The patient safety umbrella covers multiple portions of the health care industry. Because of the patient safety magnitude, health care systems are challenged to identify patient safety issues and solve them. As new problems arise they are often pushed under the patient safety umbrella. Nurse leaders are faced with determining how these patient safety additions affect them and their staff. Since patient safety and quality care are largely dependent upon the nursing staff, this paper will focus on the nurse leader’s responsibility to their staff and the legal implications when these responsibilities are not met. Aspects that determine whether or not a manager is successful in balancing their requirements include: staff hiring, training, evaluating, and disciplining; safe staffing levels; providing a safe workplace; successfully matching nursing skill with patient factors; and security of patient information. These areas are important in order for the leader and organization to remain in compliance with accrediting organizations as well as to defend against law suits which may ensue. Keywords: patient safety, workplace safety, staffing, patient information security NURSE MANAGER-EMPLOYEE RESPONSIBILITIES I. PATIENT SAFETY A. Magnitude B. BasicShow MoreRelatedLeadership And Management Approaches For Nursing1228 Words   |  5 Pagescan be avoidable compared to 36% of turnover considered to be unavoidable due to marriage, pregnancy, and other life events. (Booyens, S. (2007). Turnover. Cape Town: Juta Co, Ltd.). 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