Originally Posted by genejockey

"Cause" is a vague term here. Alzheimers has been studied for a long time, and (as I understand it) the reason for the mental decline and the death of a lot of neurons has to do with the accumulation of a lot of crappy proteins, "amyloid plaques", so in a way, that's the cause. OTOH, WHY that happens is harder to define, and may not be the same for everyone with Alzheimers. So, if you could prevent or decrease the accumulation of amyloid plaques, without knowing why they're there, you could reduce or prevent the mental decline and death of neurons.

BUT, I only know a very little about Alzheimers - I've only skimmed a few papers where things we were interested in might tangentially touch Alzheimer's research.