Book Review

Alzheimer's Disease: New Treatment Strategies

N Engl J Med 1993; 329:67-68July 1, 1993

Article

Alzheimer's Disease: New Treatment Strategies
Edited by Zaven S. Khachaturian and John P. Blass. 235 pp., illustrated. New York, Marcel Dekker, 1992. $99.75. ISBN: 0-8247-8620-3

This book is the first of a series that is planned to review new knowledge about Alzheimer's disease and other adult-onset dementias, with particular emphasis on less well known topics. This book discusses the scientific bases of innovative approaches to the treatment of Alzheimer's disease, under the broad themes of neurotransmitter replacement, neurotrophic factors, antiinflammatory treatment, amyloid suppression, and abnormal phospholipid metabolism.

It is based on a conference held at the National Institutes of Health on January 8 through 10, 1990, and all references cited precede that year. Some of the proposed work or work in progress has already been published, such as the results of the studies of tacrine by Davis et al. (New England Journal of Medicine 1992;327:1253-1259) and those of the use of acetylcarnitine by Sano et al. (Archives of Neurology 1992;49:1137-1141). The editors of future volumes in this series will need to reduce the delay between the writing of the material and the actual publication date. That said, this is an excellent overview of a complex and rapidly progressing field. The information is accessible to clinicians as well as basic scientists, who will get an accurate feeling for the difficulties of setting up adequately designed drug trials, as well as the complexity of regulating the expression of messenger RNA by nerve growth factor.

This book should be read by all investigators in the field of dementia. They can look up the publications since 1990 by the contributing authors to see whether the hypotheses they formulated and the work in progress they described did pan out and lead to major therapeutic trials. I look forward eagerly to future volumes in the series.

Serge Gauthier, M.D., F.R.C.P.C.
McGill Centre for Studies in Aging, Montreal, QC H3T 1M5, Canada