Alzheimer's disease is one of the most common causes of mental deterioration in elderly people, accounting for around 50%-60% of the overall cases of dementia among persons over 65 years of age. The past two decades have witnessed a considerable research eVort directed towards discovering the cause of Alzheimer's disease with the ultimate hope of developing safe and eVective pharmacological treatments. This article examines the existing scientific applicability of the original cholinergic hypothesis of Alzheimer's disease by describing the biochemical and histopathological changes of neurotransmitter markers that occur in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease both at postmortem and neurosurgical cerebral biopsy and the behavioural consequences of cholinomimetic drugs and cholinergic lesions. Such studies have resulted in the discovery of an association between a decline in learning and memory, and a deficit in excitatory amino acid (EAA) neurotransmission, together with important roles for the cholinergic system in attentional processing and as a modulator of EAA neurotransmission. Accordingly, although there is presently no "cure" for Alzheimer's disease, a large number of potential therapeutic interventions have emerged that are designed to correct loss of presynaptic cholinergic function. A few of these compounds have confirmed eYcacy in delaying the deterioration of symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, a valuable treatment target considering the progressive nature of the disease. Indeed, three compounds have received European approval for the treatment of the cognitive symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, first tacrine and more recently, donepezil and rivastigmine, all of which are cholinesterase inhibitors. (J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 1999;66:137-147) Keywords: acetylcholine; Alzheimer's disease; cholinesterase inhibitors; treatment Alzheimer's disease aVects an estimated 15 million people worldwide and is the leading cause of dementia in elderly people. With the proportion of elderly people in the population increasing steadily, the burden of the disease, both to carers and national economies, is expected to become substantially greater over the next 2 to 3 decades.Alzheimer's disease is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder with a mean duration of around 8.5 years between onset of clinical symptoms and death. Brain regions that are associated with higher mental functions, particularly the neocortex and hippocampus, are those most aVected by the characteristic pathology of Alzheimer's disease. This includes the extracellular deposits of -amyloid (derived from amyloid precursor protein; APP) in senile plaques, intracellular formation of neurofibrillary tangles (containing an abnormally phosphorylated form of a microtubule associated protein, tau), and the loss of neuronal synapses and pyramidal neurons. These changes result in the development of the typical symptomology of Alzheimer's disease characterised by gross and progressive impairments of cognitive function and often accompanied by...

Objective:A pilot open label, single dose trial of fenobam, an mGluR5 antagonist, was conducted to provide an initial evaluation of safety and pharmacokinetics in adult males and females with fragile X syndrome (FXS). Methods: Twelve subjects, recruited from two fragile X clinics, received a single oral dose of 50-150 mg of fenobam. Blood for pharmacokinetic testing, vital signs and side effect screening was obtained at baseline and numerous time points for 6 h after dosing. Outcome measures included prepulse inhibition (PPI) and a continuous performance test (CPT) obtained before and after dosing to explore the effects of fenobam on core phenotypic measures of sensory gating, attention and inhibition.Results: There were no significant adverse reactions to fenobam administration. Pharmacokinetic analysis showed that fenobam concentrations were dose dependent but variable, with mean (SEM) peak values of 39.7 (18.4) ng/ml at 180 min after the 150 mg dose. PPI met a response criterion of an improvement of at least 20% over baseline in 6 of 12 individuals (4/6 males and 2/6 females). The CPT did not display improvement with treatment due to ceiling effects. Conclusions: Clinically significant adverse effects were not identified in this study of single dose fenobam across the range of dosages utilised. The positive effects seen in animal models of FXS treated with fenobam or other mGluR5 antagonists, the apparent lack of clinically significant adverse effects, and the potential beneficial clinical effects seen in this pilot trial support further study of the compound in adults with FXS.Fragile X syndrome (FXS) is the most common inherited form of intellectual disability, autism, and learning disability, with a broad range of severity and full mutation gene frequency of 1/2500.1 FXS results from an unstable trinucleotide repeat expansion of .200 CGG repeats (full mutation) in the promoter of the FMR1 (fragile X mental retardation-1) gene 2 which leads to transcriptional silencing of FMR1 and thus, absence or significant reduction of the FMR1 protein (FMRP). 3Because FMR1 is located on the X chromosome, females with a full mutation are more mildly affected than males, due to production of FMRP from the normal FMR1 allele on the non-mutated X chromosome. FMRP is an RNA binding protein which modulates dendritic maturation and synaptic plasticity through mechanisms including inhibition of group 1 metabotropic glutamate receptor (mGluR1 and mGluR5) mediated mRNA translation in dendrites. [4][5][6][7]

No abstract

J. Neurochem. (2012) 121, 672–679. Abstract Fragile X syndrome (FXS) is a developmental disorder caused by the loss of Fragile X Mental Retardation 1 (FMR1) gene function because of a CGG repeat expansion (> 200 repeats) in the gene. The molecular mechanism(s) linking loss of FMR1 function to the molecular pathology and cognitive/behavioral disability remain unclear. Given the critical role of extracellular signal‐regulated kinase (ERK) in synaptic plasticity and neurodevelopment, a number of recent studies have investigated ERK phosphorylation under basal conditions or upon mGluR‐induction using neuronal and peripheral tissues from Fmr1 knockout mice and peripheral tissues from FXS patients. However, these reports have presented conflicting results. The current study is the first to focus on the levels of ERK phosphorylation in brain tissue from human FXS patients. In both human brain tissue and brain tissue from Fmr1 knockout mice there was significantly increased phosphorylation of MEK1/2 and ERK. Indeed, treating Fmr1 knockout mice with the MEK1/2 inhibitor SL327 abrogated audiogenic seizure activity, a feature of the Fmr1 knockout mice that replicates the symptom in patients with FXS. These findings suggest that activation of the ERK pathway results in some cardinal cognitive and clinical features in FXS patients and likely have profound translational implications.