Abstract
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) affects the basic ability to function and has imposed an immense burden on the community and health care system. Focused ultrasound (FUS) has recently been proposed as a novel noninvasive therapeutic approach for AD. However, systematic reviews on the FUS application in AD treatment have not been forthcoming. We followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) criteria to summarize the techniques associated with safety and efficacy, as well as possible underlying mechanisms of FUS effects on AD in animal and human studies. Animal studies demonstrated FUS with microbubbles (FUS-MB) induced blood-brain-barrier (BBB) opening that could facilitate various therapeutic agents entering the brain. Repeated FUS-MB and FUS stimulation can relieve AD pathology and improve cognitive and memory function. Human studies showed repeated FUS-MB are well tolerated with few adverse events and FUS stimulation could enhance local perfusion and neural function, which correlated with cognitive improvement. We conclude that FUS is a feasible and safe therapeutic and drug delivery strategy for AD. However, FUS treatment on humans is still in the early stages and requires further optimization and standardization.
Highlights
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) affects the basic ability to function and has imposed an immense burden on the community and health care system
Human studies showed repeated Focused ultrasound (FUS)-MB are well tolerated with few adverse events and FUS stimulation could enhance local perfusion and neural function, which correlated with cognitive improvement
A total of 60 articles were subjected to full-text review, of which 28 articles were removed based on the exclusion criteria
Summary
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) affects the basic ability to function and has imposed an immense burden on the community and health care system. There are several traditional methods for increasing drug delivery into the brain by either disrupting or bypassing the BBB, such as administration of hyperosmotic solutions [2], localized temperature elevation [3], localized injection of drugs and biologic agents (virus, vasoactive molecules and compounds that use innate cell-mediated transport) [4]. These methods are limited by poor spatial specificity, invasive methodology and require complex biochemical design, which restricts their widespread use in the clinic
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