Optimizing Drug Efficacy in Late-Onset Alzheimer’s Disease Through Combination Treatment
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.58445/rars.2726Keywords:
Alzheimer’s Disease, Alzheimer’s TreatmentAbstract
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is one of the most common neurodegenerative diseases. AD's pathology is an abnormal buildup of protein, such as amyloid-beta and highly misfolded tau, called neurofibrillary tangles. AD causes mild to severe memory loss in patients. Many methods to counteract the pathology of Alzheimer's have been found, but the most effective one is a drug, lecanemab, which can attack buildups of amyloid-beta plaques. A different technology used to treat AD that has been recently introduced to the realm of AD is focused ultrasound (FUS). The function of FUS is to temporarily open up the blood-brain barrier (BBB) so that drug therapy can seep into the brain. This process is easily accomplished and has minimal side effects. Drug therapies need the BBB to be slightly open for them to be effective, because the BBB has numerous tight junctions as a defense mechanism, ensuring it to be nearly impermeable. Given these circumstances, there has been a large effort to combine these two methods to treat AD in clinical trials. In this paper, we will review the effectiveness of the combination of FUS and lecanemab, and FUS's potential to improve drug efficacy in clinical trials for patients with AD.
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