Principles of therapeutics of galanthamine

After decades of therapeutic nihilism with scant amounts of research, our understanding of Alzheimer's disease is now expanding at an astonishing rate. The current level of insight into the mechanisms that characterize this particular form of progressive degenerative dementia has resulted in drug therapy concepts that attempt the reconstitution of impaired neurotransmission. The most widely accepted theoretical framework, the ''cholinergic hypothesis'', is based on the well-established loss of cortical cholinergic innervation in Alzheimer's disease, This concept provides a working rationale that resulted in the successful clinical development of acetylcholinesterase inhibitor drugs. While the original compounds, physostigmine and tacrine, left much to be desired, second-generation molecules of this type are expected to offer superior pharmacological profiles and increased tolerance. Galanthamine hydrobromide, originally a drug from herbal sources with a decade-long history of clinical use for other purposes, is one of these inhibitor compounds now in clinical development for Alzheimer's disease.