An Ayurvedic strategy for treatment of dementia of Alzheimer’s disease

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by progressive dementia leading to a gradual deterioration of intellectual abilities, neuropsychological deficits and personality changes. Dementia of Alzheimer’s type is the commonest form of dementia, the other two forms being vascular dementia and mixed dementia. At present, the therapy of Alzheimer’s disease is aimed at improving both, cognitive and behavioural symptoms and thereby, quality of life for the patients, but it doesn’t cure the disease. Moreover, the cost, side effects and lack of efficacy of conventional drugs has made therapy of Alzheimer’s disease difficult to be accepted by large group of people. Hence integrated knowledge of the modern science in the field of neurobiology with that of ancient traditional medicine system is required to identify therapeutics for dementia of the AD. Ayurveda is among one of the oldest form of ancient medicine system and evidences for memory improving herbal drugs are well documented in Ayurveda. Moreover, many herbal plants are screened worldwide for memory improving activity in animal models of AD. Hence, attempt has been made in this review regarding the Ayurvedic concepts of AD and some herbal plants used for treating the dementia of AD with special reference to their mechanism of action as well as pharmacological screening part.