The Promise for Alzheimer’s Disease Treatment

Abstract

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease, the most common cause of dementia in senile population. According to the World Health Organization, AD represents around 12% of people over 65 worldwide. There are about 48 million people suffering from AD and it is estimates that by 2050 the amount will increase to about 91 million. Due to its aetiological agents, neurofibrillary tangles (NFT) and amyloid plaques (AP), several attempts to explain the genesis and progression of AD have been proposed. Pathological variants of tau protein are the main precursors for AD onset, with a molecular mechanism based on neuroinflammatory processes, as explained in the context of the neuroimmunomodulation theory. Microglial cells play a preponderant role in innate immunity and are the main source of pro-inflammatory factors in the central nervous system (CNS). The links between microglia and neurons are the emerging main focus in AD pathogenesis. Depending on these factors, either a neuroprotective or a pro-inflammatory effect could be triggered. Thus in AD, a persistently active microglial condition generates neuronal damage and death, causing the release of pathological tau toward the extracellular environment. This causes the activation of microglia, promoting a feedback mechanism and generating a continuous cellular damage, synaptic dysfunction and finally cell death. Several pharmacological alternatives have been proposed in recent years to prevent and treat Alzheimer’s disease, without success when it comes to clinical trials. We therefore aim to review and direct our focus on novel natural bioactive compounds, such as those considering the broad picture of this pathology. We have proposed the neuroimmunomodulatory context in order to understand, prevent and help to control the pathology. Here, we present Brain Up-10 as a new potential compound to control AD.