Book Description

The increasing longevity of the human population is accompanied by a rise in the incidence of neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer's disease (AD). This disease accounts 70 % of dementia causes in most industrialized countries and is characterized by cell atrophy and extensive neuronal loss. According to National Institutes of Health, an estimated 8.5 million Americans will develop AD by the year 2030. It is the fourth leading cause of death in United States. The disease may span several decades if the preclinical period is included. Various strategies have been investigated to cure AD, but the use of cholinesterase inhibitor drugs has been the most clinically successful. The main function of these drugs is to improve the memory power, hence also called as memory enhancing drugs. Memory enhancement therapy can be viewed as generally benecial to many individuals, not only those whose ability to function on a day basis has been compromised. For various reasons, however, drugs potentially useful as memory or cognition enhancers are exclusively being developed to treat patients with dementia. It has been observed that many of the health drinks known as memory boosters such as Brain Speed Shake, Brain Speed Smoothie, Mocha Focus Delight etc., have substances whose chemical structure is very similar to the memory enhancing drugs viz. Galantanine hydrobromide which is widely used for treating the Alzheimer's disease. This has given an idea to take up the present study. In the present investigation, Galantamine hydrobromide, a memory enhancing drug which is a cholinesterase inhibitor has been chosen to assess its prolonged effects on some selected physiological and biochemical parameters in the skeletal muscle of albino mice during normal conditions of health. This book comprises of ve chapters and mainly studied the impact of memory enhancing drug on Cholinergic system and ATPase activities in different regions of skeletal muscle of albino mice under prolonged treatment.