Efficacy of tenuigenin and β-asarone as augmentations for memantine in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease

Abstract

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that has no cure at present. This study was carried out to evaluate whether the combination of β-asarone and tenuigenin could improve the efficacy of memantine as a monotherapy in the treatment of AD. Patients with AD were recruited and assigned to two groups. Patients in the control group received memantine (5-20 mg/day) and those in the experimental group received memantine (5-20 mg/day), β-asarone (20 mg/day), and tenuigenin (20 mg/day). The Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), Activities of Daily Living (ADL), Clinical Dementia Rating Scale (CDR) scores and drug-related side-effects were assessed. Treatment was continued for 12 weeks. In total, 93 AD patients (45 in the control group and 48 in the experimental group) were recruited. Before treatment, both the groups had similar average MMSE scores, ADL scores, and CDR scores, whereas all the average scores improved significantly after treatment. However, compared with the control group, the experimental group had a significantly higher average MMSE score (P=0.00001) and lower average ADL (P=0.00604) and CDR (P=0.00776) scores after treatment. Moreover, the two groups had similar rates of drug-related side-effects. These results indicated that the combination of β-asarone and tenuigenin was an effective augmentation for memantine in the treatment of AD and did not cause more drug-related side-effects. This novel method is worthy of further investigation.

Spore powder of Ganoderma lucidum for the treatment of Alzheimer disease

“…Treatment mainly consists of cognition enhancing medications. These medications include donepezil, [ 9 – 11 ] galantamine, [ 12 – 13 ] memantine, [ 14 – 16 ] and rivastigmine. [ 17 , 18 ] However, all these medications can not cure AD completely.…”

Neuroprotective Effects and Mechanisms of Senegenin, an Effective Compound Originated From the Roots of Polygala Tenuifolia

“…Senegenin is a potential drug for AD. Although clinical studies have found that in the treatment of moderate to severe AD, the effect of adding senegenin was significantly enhanced ( Chang and Teng, 2018 ; Dong and et al, 2018 ), there are too few clinical studies. In order to speed up the clinical application of senegenin, there are several key issues that need to be solved:…”

“…At the same time, clinical studies have also found that after adding β-asarone and senegenin to memantine, the treatment of moderate-to-severe AD was significantly enhanced, with good acceptability and no other side effects (Chang and Teng, 2018;Dong et al, 2018). There is potential for senegenin as a clinical therapy in the future, and its pharmacological research has high value for precise treatment and clinical application.…”

Therapeutic Potential of Active Components from Acorus gramineus and Acorus tatarinowii in Neurological Disorders and Their Application in Korean Medicine

“…Sixty-eight of the remaining 158 studies were excluded after reviewing their full texts. Thus, 89 studies were included for review, and the distribution of these studies by disease was as follows: AD and dementia (29); PD (12); depression and anxiety (10); epilepsy and seizure (12); stroke (10); herbal medicine (16) (Fig. 2).…”