Pharmacological approaches for Alzheimer’s disease: neurotransmitter as drug targets

Abstract

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common CNS disorder occurring worldwide. There is neither proven effective prevention for AD nor a cure for patients with this disorder. Hence, there is an urgent need to develop safer and more efficacious drugs to help combat the tremendous increase in disease progression. The present review is an attempt at discussing the treatment strategies and drugs under clinical trials governing the modulation of neurotransmitter. Therefore, looking at neurotransmitter abnormalities, there is an urge for developing the pharmacological approaches aimed at correcting those abnormalities and dysfunctioning. In addition, this review also discusses the drugs that are in Phase III trials for the treatment of AD. Despite advances in treatment strategies aimed at correcting neurotransmitter abnormalities, there exists a need for the development of drug therapies focusing on the attempts to remove the pathogenomic protein deposits, thus combating the disease progression.

Keywords:

• Alzheimer’s disease
• neurotransmitter
• neurotransmitter dysfunction
• pharmacological approaches

Financial & competing interests disclosure

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending or royalties.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.

Key issues

• Alzheimer’s disease (AD) pathology is characterized by the abnormal functioning of different neurotransmitters like acetylcholine, glutamate, serotonin and GABA.

• There are many hypotheses indicating that multiple neurotransmitters pathways could be linked to the development of AD.

• The alteration of these receptors may be associated with oxidative stress, amyloid plaque formation and tau phosphorylations in AD.

• Several different neurotransmitters can be released from a single nerve terminal, including neuropeptides and small molecule neurotransmitters.

• Experimental and clinical conditions which have been associated with altered release pattern of neurotransmitter in the AD are well noted.