What's the Difference Between Dementia and Alzheimer's?
Dementia is the name of a set of symptoms that affect daily functioning, including memory loss, behavior changes, learning difficulties, and declines in abstract reasoning and judgment. Alzheimer's disease is the name of one specific form of dementia.
It might help to think about the difference between dementia and Alzheimer's as one of those logic problems in school: All people with Alzheimer's have dementia, but not all people with dementia have Alzheimer's.
Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause of dementia symptoms, accounting for more than half of all cases of dementia. But there are dozens of other, non-Alzheimer's causes of dementia, including the following:
Vascular dementia (also called multi-infarct disease, caused by small strokes)
The neurological diseases Lewy body dementia, Parkinson's disease, Pick's disease, and Huntington's disease
Rare disorders of the brain's frontal lobes, known as frontotemporal dementia
Infections (including urinary tract infections and AIDS)
Alcoholism or substance abuse
Medication interactions or side effects
Nutritional deficiency
Head injury
Alzheimer's disease is neither reversible nor curable, though some treatment options may slow its progress. Some cases of non-Alzheimer's dementia can, however, be treated and cured. This is why testing and a thorough clinical assessment are important to determine the reason for dementia symptoms.
