The Use of Traditional Chinese Herbs, Danggui-Shaoyao-San to Prevent the Development of Vascular Dementia (VD) and Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) in the Elderly

Abstract

Dementia causes cognitive decline that is chronic and progressive. People with dementia in the world in 2015 reached 50 million and is estimated to continue to grow. Dementia mostly affects the elderly (5% of the elderly over 60 years). The most common dementias are Alzheimers disease and Vascular dementia. The current treatment for dementia has not been effective, so alternative treatments are needed, one of which is traditional Chinese medicine, namely Danggui-Shaoyao-San (DSS). This literature study aims to determine the effectiveness of Danggui-Shaoyao-San in preventing and treating cognitive decline in dementia. Literature searches using search engines such as Google Scholar, PubMed, and Science Direct. In dementia, there is a neurotoxic beta amyloid deposition in the brain. Dementia treatment of acetylcholinesterase inhibitors and N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) provides only marginal therapeutic benefit and does not halt disease progression. DSS extract, namely JD-30, can reduce the escape latency time in experimental rats injected with Senescence-accelerated mouse prone 8 (SAMP8) in the Morris water maze test. Mice were injected with SAMP8 to determine the effect of DSS in preventing cognitive decline with age. In addition to treating Alzheimers disease, DSS also reduced Nissl body damage in the CA1 hippocampus and oxidative stress in experimental rats with Vascular Cognitive Impairment (VCI). DSS research is still focused on the oral administration of DSS. However, many people with dementia have difficulty swallowing, so non-oral administration of DSS should be considered. From the various literature, DSS has been proven to be an alternative therapy for dementia, but research on non-oral DSS administration is still very little so further research is needed.