Current advances in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease: focused on considerations targeting Aβ and tau.

Transl Neurodegener

Department of Neurology and Institute of Neurology, Ruijin Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, 200025, People's Republic of China.

Published: October 2012

AI Article Synopsis

  • - Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative condition primarily affecting memory and cognitive functions in older adults, characterized by the buildup of beta amyloid plaques and tau protein abnormalities in neurons.
  • - Current treatments focus on relieving symptoms rather than addressing the underlying causes of AD, as the precise mechanisms of the disease are not fully understood.
  • - Recent research suggests that these symptom-relieving drugs may also influence the processing of amyloid precursor proteins and tau phosphorylation, indicating a more complex pharmacological action than previously thought.

Article Abstract

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder that impairs mainly the memory and cognitive function in elderly. Extracellular beta amyloid deposition and intracellular tau hyperphosphorylation are the two pathological events that are thought to cause neuronal dysfunction in AD. Since the detailed mechanisms that underlie the pathogenesis of AD are still not clear, the current treatments are those drugs that can alleviate the symptoms of AD patients. Recent studies have indicated that these symptom-reliving drugs also have the ability of regulating amyloid precursor protein processing and tau phosphorylation. Thus the pharmacological mechanism of these drugs may be too simply-evaluated. This review summarizes the current status of AD therapy and some potential preclinical considerations that target beta amyloid and tau protein are also discussed.

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Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3514124PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/2047-9158-1-21DOI Listing

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