Action Characteristics of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Treatment of Alzheimer's Disease

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a multifactorial complex disease. The failure of recent development of AD therapeutic agents in clinical trials is mainly due to their single-target or single-pathogenic pathway effect. The poor clinical outcome of AD treatment is also due to the late intervention. A large number of neuronal death has already happened at the time of diagnosis. Aiming at the complex diseases with unclear causes and many related factors, the multi-target and multi-link treatment characteristics of traditional Chinese medicine have advantages over the single target treatment. Therefore, we have committed to the research of traditional Chinese medicine in treatment of AD and the development of new drugs since 1995. In this paper, our research results for more than 10 years were reviewed. Our study showed that traditional Chinese medicine formula (Shenwu capsule) and single herb extracts (Tetrahydroxy-stilbene glucoside, Cornel iridoid glycoside, Epimedium flavone and Icariin) could act on the complex pathogenesis of AD at multi-targets and multi-pathways, especially have both neuroprotective and neurotrophic/regenerative effects, and protect mitochondria and synapses, thus have significant features and advantages for the treatment of AD.