Alzheimers/Dementia and Autism

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No, not 100%.

Autism, if it is linked to dementia, will increase the risk only slightly. As for your family history, how old were your grandparents when they got Alzheimer's? If they were over 60 it doesn't count in terms of your own risk. (I've been told this by a geneticist.) Only early-onset Alzheimer's seems to run in families.

Besides, if we get Alzheimer's later on, it doesn't invalidate the rest of our lives. If I knew for certain I would develop dementia, I would focus on enjoying my life before the dementia develops. And autism doesn't stop you from enjoying your life. (I know this for a fact, because I'm autistic and I'm happy and I know many other happy autistics.)

Ettina, I agree completely. The fact is that we are all going to die of something, and likely it won't be pretty or nice. But this is no reason not to make the most of life.

As far as happiness goes, happiness for me isn't wanting something other than what I have, but making the most of what I do have. It makes no sense at all not to live for fear of dying.

Yes , exactly, even Down Syndrome which is commonly known to be associated with an increased risk of AD only increases your risk of getting it to 10%. Also, these studies haven't even shown ANY increased risk of getting AS if you have ASD, only a connection between the disorders. Whether there's an increased risk or not has yet to be determined. There might be a lower risk of developing it. We don't know what the connection means yet.



Very good point.

My mum's mum got Alzheimer's at around 75 and my dad's dad got Alzheimer's around 78. They're both NTs and were perfectly healthy before.

We often read everywhere that people are at a lower risk of getting Alzheimer's if they had spent a lot of time in their life walking, eating healthily, not drinking much alcohol, and doing puzzles like crosswords. My mum's mum didn't have a car and used to bike a lot when she was young and she walked an awful lot when she was older, right up until she first got Alzheimer's, then she stopped going out by herself. She also always ate healthily and was always a healthy person, and never drank alcohol except for the odd occasion. Also when she retired she spent nearly all her time knitting toys and doing a lot of crossword puzzles. But she still got Alzheimer's. Also my dad's dad gone a lot of walking all his life too, and still wanted to go out when he had Alzheimer's. Now he's recently died.
So now me and my family always say ''if you're gonna get it, you're gonna get it.''




I always thought the symptoms and behaviour of someone with Dementia was to do with their brain gradually dying off (cells rotting away). Although Autistic people and Alzheimer's people may share a few symptoms, it's still not for the same reasons. An Autistic brain is just wired differently, and is not an unhealthy brain.

Also some people with Autism can have a really, really good short term and long term memory. I believe my long term and short term memory is just average.

You might as well say everyone on this planet has a bit of Alzheimer's because everyone forgets things at times. That sounds very inaccurate and silly to me.

I had been wondering about this, and I find these posts mostly reassuring. Nobody in my family had Alzheimer's or dementia except an in-law, not genetically related to me at all.

All I have to worry about health-wise as I age is cancer (if I do not kill myself, get murdered, or die in an accident or natural disaster, this is what I will probably die from), diabetes, heart disease, osteoporosis, etc..

Dementia - Schizophrenia - Autism

All three have similar symptoms of similar severity. Each has a unique symptom profile (which is why they're separated), but the overlap is immense, and one can say one of the biggest differences between all three is the age of onset (the one outlier today is childhood schizophrenia, but that also has immense overlap with childhood autism/AS).

Back in the day, all three disorders were grouped together (for the most part), and that's not because they had nowhere else to put them (people like making labels).

Someone with autism developing dementia probably wouldn't be recognized as developing it -- until memory problems and/or positive symptoms of schizophrenia show up, then they'd just tag that on.

If you have an ASD, dementia ain't something to worry about.

There is a link between autism, Alzheimer's, and other forms of dementia, but it is because of shared commonalities of symptoms and experience.There is no evidence that people with autism are more likely to develop Alzheimer's or dementia then the general population.
A genetic link has been found between Alzheimer's and schizophrenia.
http://schizophrenia.com/sznews/archives/000962.html
Edit: Of course there is also a genetic link between autism and schizophrenia but genetic links don't imply that there is a greater chance of developing Alzheimer's. There would need to be a study comparing rates of Alzheimer's in autistics and schizophrenics to rates of Alzheimer's in neurotypicals.

On the Aspergers time scale the number of individuals who have a professional diagnosis and dementia is still too small to prove a connection.

I've heard that people with a high iq are less likely to get it? So, did the study look at a lot of LFAs with iq below 70?

Yeah, you could have a genetic link trait show up as either A or B, but not A and B. For example, people with sickle cell trait are resistant to malaria, but sickle cell anemia doesn't affect susceptibility to malaria.

Furthermore, it could be that mutations A & B are related to autism and schizophrenia, while mutations C & D are related to schizophrenia and Alzheimer's.

Thats makes as much sense as saying "because of her great lifestyle my mom never gets erectile dysfunction".

For your information: alzeheimers happens to OLD people.
The word means "oldtimer's" disease in German.

Fifty is barely middle aged ( but since you're obviouly around 12 years old everyone over 30 seems probably seems like an Egyptian mummy to you).

My mom has it full blown now, but only started showing signs of it a few years ago when she was around 80. Same time frame with Reagan, and everyone else Ive ever heard of who got it.

Well it seems to me that every single medical issue in the book is linked to Autism, according to Autism forums. If it was true, I think Autistic people would die by the age of 10.

Wouldn't be surprised if all of these have been mentioned about ''being linked with Autism'' here on WP.

http://www.medicinenet.com/diseases_and ... lpha_a.htm

Schizophrenia and the Autism spectrum were recognized as distinct by 1980. Autism is not dementia.

As to schizophrenia, the original name for that condition was dementia praecox (premature madness). However, the majority of psychiatrists do not define schizophrenia as dementia either.

Whether Autistics have a higher risk rate for developing Alzheimer's is a separate issue. For instance, as a diabetic, I have a higher risk than average for developing heart disease. However, that doesn't mean that diabetes and heart disease are the same.

There is also premature senile dementia, although I don't know the association between that and ordinary aged dementia (or autism).

Common use is 'early onset dementia' as described previously in this thread, the phrase used above is seen as confusing.

Regarding the rest of your thread. I really feel that you are scare mongering here with no actual evidence to back up your claims.

A link has not yet been theorized let alone proven,

You post articles that can not be viewed by public, are not found or happen to put Alhzeimers and Autism in the same sentence.

The closest thing to evidence that you have linked to is this:



I really do not feel that you should be upsetting people by making claims that do not exist.

No, it's not, but there's overlap in symptoms.

Schizophrenia was called dementia praecox, and that's because it was "premature". Standard dementia was just madness (which came on later in life). Autism would have come under dementia simplex or something similar (you'll note Simple Schizophrenia, which has fallen out of use; I read that the majority of people in residential care who had AS in the past were diagnosed with that), which apart from the lack of positive symptoms of schizophrenia, was synonymous with dementia praecox.

Hence, there's a symptomatic overlap between all three, and one of the biggest differences is actually age of onset.