Why it should be "Alzheimer disease" rather than "Alzheimer's disease"

Authors

  • Cinthya Aguero MassGeneral Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease, Charlestown, MA, USA; Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA; Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9483-429X
  • C.Zachary Klein MassGeneral Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease, Charlestown, MA, USA; Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA
  • Georg Haase Institute of Systems Neuroscience, INSERM - Aix-Marseille University, UMS 1106, Marseille, France

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17879/freeneuropathology-2026-9132

Keywords:

Alzheimer disease, Alzheimer's disease, Down syndrome, Tourette syndrome, Possessive eponym, Non-possessive eponym, ICD-11, AMA style guide, NIH editorial style guide, Exact phrase, All fields, MeSH

Abstract

The terms "Alzheimer's disease" and "Alzheimer disease" are often used interchangeably in the biomedical literature. Yet this seemingly minor grammatical difference carries implications that extend beyond style: the possessive form, marked by the 's eponym, may imply ownership of a disease by an individual, a notion discouraged by several authoritative medical style guides and international health organizations. In this article, we examine the historical emergence of the term "Alzheimer's disease", analyze the trajectories of the possessive and non-possessive eponyms in PubMed-indexed article titles from 1950 to 2025, and assess how the choice of terminology influences literature retrieval. Our analysis indicates that the possessive form has overwhelmingly dominated the literature for decades. However, searches using "Alzheimer's disease" or "Alzheimer disease" retrieve non-identical, only partially overlapping sets of records in PubMed. We argue that adopting the non-possessive form "Alzheimer disease" would improve conceptual clarity, terminological consistency, and the completeness of literature retrieval, particularly in systematic reviews and meta-analyses.

Author Biography

Cinthya Aguero, MassGeneral Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease, Charlestown, MA, USA; Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA; Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

I am a physician from Costa Rica, currently serving as a researcher at the Massachusetts Alzheimer Disease Research Center (MADRC) in the Department of Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital and as an Instructor at Harvard Medical School. My career has centered on scientific discovery, health innovation, and education.

My current work focuses on advanced neuroimaging, particularly the use of novel tau PET radioligands to detect tau pathology in vivo, as well as understanding the phenomenon of “resilience” at the cellular level.

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Published

2026-03-23

How to Cite

Aguero, C., Klein, C., & Haase, G. (2026). Why it should be "Alzheimer disease" rather than "Alzheimer’s disease". Free Neuropathology, 7, 7. https://doi.org/10.17879/freeneuropathology-2026-9132

Issue

Vol. 7 (2026)

Section

Opinion Pieces

License

Copyright (c) 2026 Cinthya Aguero, C.Zachary Klein, Georg Haase

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Papers are published open access under the Creative Commons BY 4.0 license. This license lets others distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. Data included in the article are made available under the CC0 1.0 Public Domain Dedication waiver, unless otherwise stated, meaning that all copyrights are waived.