Fourth Hungarian Conference on Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders Szeged, Hungary, October 7-9, 1998 (original) (raw)

delivered the opening lecture, dealing with the therapy of Alzheimer's disease (AD), present and future. He concluded that at present the cholinesterase inhibitors are the drugs of choice for the treatment of AD. Following a first generation of non-specific drugs such as physostigmine, a second generation of more selective products has been developed, with less severe side effects at effective doses. Recent clinical results on the effect of drugs on cognition and on behavioral symptoms in people with AD confirm early predictions of behavioral pharmacology from studies in animals and humans. Cholinesterase inhibitors, however, are not the only agents related to cholinergic therapy. As discussed during the conference, muscarinic and nicotinic agonists and antagonists are under development. Giacobini called attention to potentially interesting combinations of cholinesterase inhibitors with estrogens, anti-inflammatory drugs, and anti-oxidants. Other drugs based on amyloid precursor protein (APP), amyloid-β (Aβ), apolipoprotein E (ApoE) and presenilins are still at the preclinical stage of investigation.