Title:The Vascular Component of Alzheimer`s Disease
Volume: 11
Issue: 2
Author(s): Dafin Fior Muresanu, Aurel Popa-Wagner, Adina Stan, Ana-Maria Buga and Bogdan Ovidiu Popescu
Affiliation:
Keywords:
Alzheimer’s disease, neurodegeneration, neurovascular unit dysfunction, vascular dementia, vascular risk factors.
Abstract: Cognitive abilities depend primarily on cerebrovascular health and aging. In this work, we examine the
pathogenic mechanisms of brain dysfunction linked to vascular risk factors, insulin signaling and cerebrovascular damage
and explore how these mechanisms interfere with neurodegeneration. Although Abeta hypothesis prevails in the ethiology
of Alzheimer's Disease (AD), it has become increasingly evident that disturbances in cerebral glucose metabolism is an
invariant pathophysiological feature of AD and may provide an ubiquituos mechanism underlying the pathogenesis of
AD. Currently, it is difficult to identify efficient therapeutic approach for brain protection and recovery, especially
because we do not fully understand the underlying neurobiological processes, the nature of the pathophysiological
mechanisms and the links between these two categories. Endogenous neurobiological processes, such as “brain reserves”,
neurotrophicity, neuroplasticity and neurogenesis, are central to protection and recovery and represent the background of
endogenous defense activity (EDA). The historical concept of neuroprotection being the suppression of
pathophysiological processes by a single mechanism or molecule may have been effective in clinical practice, but is now
obsolete and indicates a failure of the reductionist approach to neuroprotection in the clinical setting. Pharmacological
intervention should address modulation not suppression. The more pathophysiological processes are modulated, the better
the chances are for therapeutic success in brain protection and recovery. Therefore, drugs with pleiotropic neuroprotective
mechanisms of action are the best candidates for acute neuroprotection.