Alzheimer’s Disease Treatment With Cerebrolysin
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is one of the popular disease of central nervous system that affects millions of people every year. The disease causes severe neuropathological changes in the brain, reducing the number of neurons.
Neuropathological changes were characterized by the presence of amyloid plaques, neurofibrillary tangles and cerebral amyloid angiopathy. As the etiology of Alzheimer’s disease is not fully understood, new therapeutic methods of treatment are based mainly on the amyloid hypothesis. Treatment by neurotrophic factors includes multi-therapeutic approach.
Preclinical studies of Cerebrolysin revealed its neurotrophic and neuroprotective properties, as well as the ability to stimulate neuroneogenesis. Therapeutic action exerted by the biologically active peptides containing in Cerebrolysin is very clos to natural growth factors.
Cerebrolysin is prepared using standardized methods of biotechnology. Its molecular weight is less than 10 kilodaltons. This provides good penetration through the blood-brain barrier. Cerebrolysin prevents the degeneration of neurons, increases the density of synapses and normalizes the structure of neurons, helps to improve memory.
The recent study conducted on transgenic mice Rockenstein et al. showed that Cerebrolysin decreases protein phosphorylation, amyloid precursor, thereby reducing the accumulation of amyloid in brain tissue. The authors emphasize that stabilizing effect of Cerebrolysin on neurons is particularly important in clinical practice. After the end of treatment with Cerebrolysin, therapeutic effect lasts for 3 months.
These dobtained dat were confirmed in following studies, showing that the positive therapeutic effects of the four-week course of treatment is mainteinded for 6 months.