EssayA Hundred Years of Alzheimer’s Disease Research

On the 100th anniversary of Alzheimer’s lecture de-scribing the clinicopathological entity which bears his eponym, this article reviews the major areas of progress in our understanding of the disease and outlines the many gaps still remaining. The progress toward effective mechanistic therapy is reviewed. On November 3, 1906, Alois Alzheimer gave a lecture to theMeeting of the Psychiatrists of SouthWest Germany, presenting the neuropathological and clinical descrip-tion of the features of one of his cases, Auguste D., who had died of a dementing illness at the age of 55, having been brought to his attention by her worried family at the age of 51 (Alzheimer, 1907). In his short de-scription he discussed the clinical features of her case (which, while clearly including a progressive dementia