Phytoconstituents and their Possible Mechanistic Profile for Alzheimer's Disease - A Literature Review

Abstract

Memory is an associated part of life without which livelihood of a human being becomes miserable. As the global aged population is increasing tremendously, time has come to concentrate on tail end life stage diseases. Alzheimer's disease (AD) is one of such diseases whose origin is enigmatic, having an impact on later stage of life drastically due to irreparable damage of cognition, characterised by the presence of neurotoxic amyloid-beta (Aβ) plaques and hyper phosphorylated Tau protein as fibrillary tangles. Existing therapeutic regimen mainly focuses on symptomatic relief by targeting neurotransmitters that are secondary to AD pathology. Plant derived licensed drugs, Galantamine and Huperzine-A were studied extensively due to their AChE inhibitory action for mild to moderate cases of AD. Although many studies have proved the efficacy of AChEIs as a preferable symptom reliever, they cannot offer long term protection. The future generation drugs of AD is expected to alter various factors that underlie the disease course with a symptomatic benefit promise. As AD involves complex pathology, it is essential to consider several molecular divergent factors apart from the events that result in the production of toxic plaques and neurofibrillary tangles. Even though several herbals have shown neuroprotective actions, we have mentioned about the phytoconstituents that have been tested experimentally against different Alzheimer's pathology models. These phytoconstituents need to be considered by the researchers for further drug development process to make them viable clinically, which is currently a lacuna.

Keywords: AChEIs; Alzheimer's disease; Galantamine and Huperzine-A; amyloid beta; phytoconstituents; traditional medicine and neurogenesis..