Take a look at the Recent articles

Alzheimer’s disease: Issues worthy of attention

Can Sheng

Department of Neurology, the First Hospital of Tsinghua University, Beijing 100016, China

E-mail : bhuvaneswari.bibleraaj@uhsm.nhs.uk

DOI: 10.15761/ADCN.1000103

Article
Article Info
Author Info
Figures & Data

Alzheimer’s disease (AD), characterized by progressive decline of memory and other cognitive domains, is the most common form of neurodegenerative disorders leading to dementia. AD has been considered as one of the great health-care challenges in the 21st century, with worldwide estimates of 30 million people with dementia. Currently, given lack of effective treatment at the stage of dementia, many studies have been focusing on the investigations of brain abnormalities in the stages of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and preclinical AD, which are of great importance for delineating AD-related disease progression and developing biomarkers for early diagnosis and intervention.

Although the pathological mechanisms responsible for the onset of AD and how they lead to the rapid decline of cognitive function remain unclear, it is possible that amyloid β (Aβ) may be the initial accelerator. Aβ is the critically pathological biomarker of AD, and researchers have found that Aβ accelerates tau-related neurodegeneration and then accelerates other neurodegenerative biomarker abnormalities, including neural dysfunction and structural atrophy, which have a more direct correlation with cognitive impairment than Aβ. Nowadays, neurotransmitter regulation is used to relieve AD-related symptoms, but it is still difficult to reverse the disease progression. Therefore, researches involved in drugs targeting Aβ in the treatment of AD have been widely developed in order to intervene the process of AD. Recently, however, most of such clinical trials failed.

Currently, the advance of multiple techniques, such as structural magnetic resonance imaging (sMRI), resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI), diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), positron emission tomography (PET), provide a promising prospect that allows to non-invasively investigating characteristics of brain structure and spontaneous functional activities in AD. For example, DTI is sensitive to white matter ultrastructural damage and previous studies have confirmed the reducing fractional anisotropy (FA) and increased mean diffusivity (MD) in several fiber bundles, such as the cingulum bundles, the parahippocampal cingulum and long-distance association fascicles for patients with AD and aMCI. Additionally, numerous studies have demonstrated disrupted functional connectivity within default mode network (DMN) in AD. However, due to the complex pathologically mechanisms and the probably widespread disruption of structural or functional connectivity, investigations from the perspective of whole-brain structural or functional connectome are of great values.

Besides imaging and traditionally cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers, researchers are increasingly focusing on the biomarkers in blood and urine due to their comparatively non-invasive, simple and economic characteristics, such as protein phosphatase-2A, leptin, homocysteine, Alzheimer-associated neuronal thread protein (AD7c-NTP), etc. Although above-mentioned new fluid biomarkers have lots of advantages, there are few biomarkers with higher sensitivity and specificity in diagnosing AD, especially in the early stage of the disease. Thus, in the future study, linking multiple biomarkers, including imaging and fluid biomarkers, may be an effective approach for screening prodromal AD.

Of the many non-communicable diseases, dementia is predicted to have the greatest economic and social effect. Improving care and help for patients with AD should always remain a priority and we should try our best to provide a better future for them.

Editorial Information

Editor-in-Chief

Article Type

Editorial

Publication history

Received date: November 23, 2016
Accepted date: December 21, 2016
Published date: December 2021 Copyright OAT. All rights reserv

Copyright

© 2016 Sheng C. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Citation

Sheng C (2016) Alzheimer’s disease: Issues worthy of attention. Alzheimers Dement Cogn Neurol. 1: DOI: 10.15761/ADCN.1000103.

Corresponding author

Can Sheng

Department of Neurology, the First Hospital of Tsinghua University, Beijing 100016, China; Tel: 86-18701257298;

No figures