Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that often occurs in the elderly population. Its main clinical manifestations are memory loss, cognitive impairment, and impairment in daily behavior, which have a great negative impact on the patients’ daily life and seriously reduce their quality of life.
Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia, followed by vascular dementia and then mixed dementia. The pharmacological treatment for Alzheimer’s disease patients mainly includes the following.
(1) Basic supportive therapy: vasodilatation, improvement of cerebral circulation, nerve nutrition, antioxidant drugs, etc., especially for patients with combined vascular dementia, commonly used drugs include ginkgo biloba preparations, olanzapine, aniracetam, vitamin E, etc.
(2) Drugs to improve cognitive function: ①Cholinesterase inhibitors: such as donepezil, lisdexamfetamine, carboplatin, galantamine, staphylococcus aureus, etc. Since the early memory impairment of Alzheimer’s disease patients is related to the reduction of central nervous acetylcholine transmitters, by taking these drugs to patients to reduce the degradation of acetylcholine, the cognitive function of patients can be improved to a certain extent; ②NMDA receptor (2) NMDA receptor antagonists: the representative drug is memantine, which is commonly used in patients with moderate to severe dementia.
(3) Control of psychiatric symptoms: Many patients will have psychiatric symptoms during the disease process, such as hallucinations, delusions, depression, anxiety, sleep disorders, etc.. Antidepressants are commonly used often choose fluoxetine, paroxetine, citalopram, sertraline, etc.; antipsychotics are commonly used risperidone, olanzapine, quetiapine, etc.
The choice of using drugs for controlling psychiatric symptoms is: low dose start, slow increment, slightly longer interval between increments, minimum effective dose for short-term use, attention to drug interactions, individualization, etc. Therefore, it is important to consult a neurologist and follow medical advice when using drugs.
In conclusion, although there is no specific treatment to reverse or stop the progression of Alzheimer’s disease, timely treatment at the early stage of the disease is still very important to delay the deterioration of patients’ quality of life.