Ebook: Neuroinflammatory Mechanisms in Alzheimer’s Disease Basic and Clinical Research

Research into inflammatory mechanisms that may cause damage to the Alzheimer's disease (AD) brain has now been ongoing for nearly two decades. Some two dozen clinical studies have strongly suggested that conventional anti-inflammatory drugs may be useful to delay the onset or slow the progression of the disorder. Moreover, virtually all the major systems of the innate immune response appear to be present, and most are upregulated, in pathologically-vulnerable regions of the AD brain. These new findings are described in this volume - first in overview form, followed by chapters on topics of special interest. In many ways, to understand AD brain inflammation, one need only review a text on peripheral inflammation biology, leaving out the chapters on humoral medi­ ators and substituting microglia for macrophages. In several other key respects, however, AD brain inflammation is unique, due primarily to idiosyncratic interac­ tions of inflammatory mediators and mechanisms with classical AD pathology: amyloid ~ peptide(A~) deposits and neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs). For this reason, some key concepts about the inflammation that occurs in AD may warrant discus­ sion in preparation for the more detailed chapters that follow.

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There has been an increasing appreciation of the economic and human toll that age-related disorders take throughout the world. Unprecedented research efforts have followed, aiming at the understanding and treatment of Alzheimer's Disease (AD) in particular, and this effort has finally begun to bear fruit - sometimes in surprising ways: Twenty years ago, the idea that AD involved any sort of inflammatory or immune component seemed implausible, if considered at all. Now, there are hundreds of laboratories world-wide that are pursuing basic research in this area, and multi-site clinical trials are underway to test the therapeutic potential of common anti-inflammatory drugs in AD. How this dramatic sea-change came about is made clear in this book, both through overviews of the field and through focused papers on specific topics of recent interest. Complement, cytokines and the complex host of other acute phase reactants are covered, as are summaries of many epidemiologic and clinical-pathological findings...