The Calcium Signaling System: Aiming for a Comprehensive Explanation of Aging and the Dementia-Alzheimer’s Syndrome

Efforts to find treatments for chronic brain disorders such as the dementia-Alzheimer syndrome 2 are imperative, given the growing psycho-social challenges and escalating expenses associated with caring for affected individuals on a global scale.The aim of eradicating the dementia-Alzheimer syndrome from the world is a top priority for public health systems globally.However, there is still no clear path to achieving this goal.Despite significant investments in research for over 40 years, there are only a few effective interventions available to slow down the progression of the disease or delay the onset of cognitive impairment and other disabling symptoms.One of the main challenges in developing therapies for chronic brain disorders like dementia is the complexity of the neurobiology involved.Another is the lack of a conceptual framework connecting the components and variables involved.These two factors contribute to the difficulty of discovering effective interventions.Over the past four decades, studies on the dementia-Alzheimer syndrome have uncovered a wealth of information about the aging of the brain and the process of neurodegeneration.However, the field lacks a unifying theory 3 that can connect the dots and guide the exploration, testing, and validating of new interventions.Therefore, the calcium hypothesis, which was originally proposed as a potential unifying concept, has been restructured as a set of testable postulates based on system theory.This approach may eventually lead to a comprehensive theory that links aging and neurodegenerative disorders, such as the dementia-Alzheimer syndrome.The task of formulating a comprehensive theory of aging and dementia-Alzheimer syndromic continuum is fraught with several conceptual, scientific, and methodological impediments.Among these the most relevant include the nature of the disease itself (i.e., an ambiguous and shifting definition), the lengthy