Current Pharmaceutical Design - Volume 10, Issue 3, 2004

Diagnosis and therapy of dementia have made considerable progress in recent years. Drugs have been developed which improve cognitive performance, delay the loss of abilities of daily living and prevent early nursing home placement in a considerable number of patients. With the various pharmacological and non-pharmacological approaches, effective treatment options of AD are available at present and the thera Read More

Alzheimer's Disease (AD) is the most common cause for dementia in our ageing population, which leads to a slowly progressive, irretrievable ruination of mental function. The destructive, primarily degenerative condition is neuropathologically characterized by the formation of amyloid plaques, neurofibrillary tangles and loss of neurons and synapses as well. Research during the past twenty years revealed early in the di Read More

Memantine, a non-competitive NMDA antagonist, has been clinically used in the treatment of dementia in Germany for over ten years. The rationale for this indication is strongly related to the physiological and to the pathological role of glutamate in neurotransmission. Physiolgically, NMDA receptors mediate synaptic plasticity by acting as a coincidence detector. Only those synapses that show temporally and spatially Read More

Ginkgo biloba extracts (EGb) are well-defined plant extracts. It has several indications as dementia, macula degeneration, tinnitus and winter depression. A review of the current and past literature about older people with Alzheimer's dementia or vascular dementia or age-associated memory impairment treated with Ginkgo biloba extract, reveals that EGb has reproducible effects on cognitive functions in Alzheimer's Read More

A review of neurochemical research on classical neurotransmitters, i.e. acetylcholine, serotonin, noradrenaline, dopamine, glutamate, and GABA in Alzheimer's disease is presented. Findings are linked to the information processing system of the human brain to establish a more functional neurochemistry. On this basis, different pharmacotherapeutic strategies are discussed. Our conclusion is that current symptomatic ther Read More

The great number of people suffering from dementia present a great challenge for the health care and social support systems. In a situation where resources are scarce, health economical aspects of dementia care are of great importance in order to identify cost-effective care. However, the literature in this field is limited. There are also aspects where there methodological development is necessary (e.g. informal care, qualit Read More

Cholecystokinin, originally thought to be confined only to the gastrointestinal tract, is now known to be co-localised in both the gastrointestinal tract and central nervous system. In animal models levels are increased after neural injury and with opioid administration. This peptide acts as an anti-opioid, and as levels increase, the extent of opioid derived antinociception decreases. Co-administration of a CCK antagonist along with Read More

The HIV / AIDS pandemic continues its spread at a rate of over 15,000 new infections every day. Sexual transmission of HIV-1 is the dominant mode of this pandemic spread. For the first time since the disease emerged in the early 1980s, about half the 42 million people now living with HIV / AIDS worldwide are women. Worldwide, more than 90 percent of all adolescent and adult HIV infections have resulted from heterosexual inte Read More