Dementia is a group of diseases, including Alzheimer's disease (AD), vascular dementia, Lewy body dementia, frontotemporal dementia, Parkinson's disease dementia, metabolic dementia and toxic dementia. The treatment of dementia mainly includes symptomatic treatment by controlling the primary disease and accompanying symptoms, nutritional support therapy for repairing nerve cells, psychological auxiliary treatment, and treatment that improves cognitive function through drugs. Among them, drug therapy to improve cognitive function is important. This review focuses on introducing and commenting on some recent progress in exploring drugs to improve cognitive function, especially the new progress in drug treatment for AD. We mainly discuss the opportunities and challenges in finding and developing new therapeutic drugs from the aspects of acetylcholinesterase, N-methyl-D-aspartate glutamate receptor, amyloid protein, tau protein and chronic immune inflammation.
Keywords: Alzheimer's disease; Beta amyloid; Cholinesterase inhibitor; Dementia; Tau protein.
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