Comparison of Diseases Causing Dementia

Comparison of Diseases Causing Dementia

Your task is to complete this worksheet progressively through the semester, with your collated information for normal ageing, Alzheimer’s disease (AD), frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD), vascular dementia (VaD) and dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) contributing to your assessment for CAD201, due on Monday 15^th May, 2017 at 23:59 (Hobart time).

You do not need to complete the Other Dementias section (HIV-associated cognitive decline and alcohol-related dementia) as part of your assessment, but you should aim to do so over the course of the semester.

Below are some prompts as to the types of information that should be included for each disease as a minimum (some of these will not be relevant for normal ageing!), under the following headings:

Prevalence and incidence

How many persons in Australia does this disease affect?  Are there countries that have substantially different (higher or lower) prevalence?(unique_solution)

Anatomy and Physiology

Which area(s) of the brain are affected in each disease?  What are the normal structures, functions and behaviours?

Pathology

What are the changes that occur in the affected brain region(s) for each of these diseases?

What effect do these have in terms of brain function and the behaviour of a person with this disease?

Causes (if known)

Are there genetic causes for each disease?  Or environmental causes?  Or is the disease aetiology unknown?

However, you are encouraged to include other information you find that you think interesting, important or useful to you.  Points of difference or similarity between the different diseases may be particularly useful here.

Please also view the rubric for this task to better understand the type and depth of information required.

You are expected to create short academic summaries under the above headings for each disease; you can use ‘dot-points’.  We anticipate approximately 400 words for ageing and for each disease (for a total of 2000 words for assessment).  You MUST include in text citations and a complete reference list that supports the information you enter into this worksheet.  The reference list should be supplied as one single list at the end of the entire document in APA formatting.

Other Dementias:

NOTE: You do not need to complete this section as part of your submitted assessment for CAD201.

References