The incidence and prevalence of Alzheimer's disease.

The prevalence of Alzheimer's disease (AD) has grown progressively over the past 100 years. The present study monitored the evolution of AD incidence in relation to several factors known as favoring it, in a county in Romania, between 1980 and 2006. The annual incidence of AD in our clinic over a period of 27 years was determined along with 17 hereditary, medical, sociodemographic and environmental parameters. The results show a relatively steady curve until 1994, followed by a doubling of the incidence with a tendency to continuous growth. During this period, none of the known pathogenic factors--medical, psychological or sociodemographic--suffered any mathematically significant transformation. The only significant change for this population was the access to industrialized and preserved food and fizzy drinks which came from the western world, immediately after the borders had opened (1989). Therefore, the cause of the increased AD incidence must be looked for in food hygiene, and we must accept the notion of an ecologically caused disease.