Volume : 8, Issue : 3, March - 2019

ABNORMAL NEUROGENESIS IN ALZHIEMERS DISEASE

Barun Kumar

Abstract :

Alzheimer‘s disease (AD) has become a matter of serious concern as the number of aged individuals is increasing globally. Much progress has occurred in understanding the cognitive de􀃶cits in AD since the discovery of this condition. Although neurogenesis has been studied in AD patients, it has been rarely studied in association with cognitive functions in AD. Presently, there is no consensus on the role of impaired neurogenesis in the etiology of cognitive impairments of AD although the 􀃶ndings indicate a strong association in between them. In this review article, we aim at highlighting and elaborating this association. We will begin by reviewing the literature of abnormal neurogenesis in AD. Then we will ie􀃸y address the importance of hippocampal neurogenesis in the cognitive functions of adult ain. This will be followed by a review of the studies which have speci􀃶cally explored the impairments of neurogenesis in association with the severity of cognitive impairments of AD. We will then address the therapeutic implications of these 􀃶ndings. These studies include transgenic animal model studies as well as human studies on AD. We observed that most of the studies showed that cognitive de􀃶cits were associated with impairments in hippocampal neurogenesis. However, some studies show that impaired cognition was also found in relation with increased neurogenesis in AD patients. We 􀃶nally look into the limitations of these studies which inhibit them from becoming ideal models for human AD subjects.