However, the benefits to the patient are independence for longer times, which can help to ease the pain of the disease for both the patients and the caregiver. MANY Alzheimer's patients have a loss of memory which gets progressively worse. The plaques contain a protein called the beta-amyloid peptide. The tangles contain an abnormal form of the protein tau. Frontotemporal dementia patients initially have behavioral changes and problems with language.
Memory loss comes later.
These brains at autopsy have no plaques or tangles, but there are deposits of an abnormal form of tau. Parkinson's disease patients have tremors at rest, muscle rigidity, and difficulty in starting movements. Lewy bodies contain a protein called alpha-synuclein, which is mutated in several large families with Parkinson's disease. Some 30 percent of Parkinson's patients develop dementia during the course of the disease. Their brains also have plaques and tangles, similar to an Alzheimer's brain.