Research Progress and Future Development Directions of Alzheimers Disease

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder marked by the deterioration of neuronal cells, resulting in dementia and a reduction in cognitive abilities and autonomy in daily tasks. AD is a multifactorial disease impacted by numerous factors, including the cholinergic and amyloid hypotheses, advancing age, genetic predispositions, head trauma, vascular disorders, infections, and environmental influences. Present therapies, such as cholinesterase inhibitors and N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonists, merely offer symptomatic alleviation without altering the advancement of the disease. Despite decades of research, no curative treatments exist, and numerous clinical trials have failed to demonstrate significant improvements in disease progression. While recent advancements, including the evaluation of drugs like aducanumab, offer hope, the journey toward effective disease-modifying therapies remains ongoing. This review discusses the current state of available treatments, the challenges they face, and future research directions aimed at developing disease-modifying therapies (DMTs) that target abnormal tau protein metabolism, -amyloid accumulation, inflammatory responses, and other underlying mechanisms.