A Narrative Review of Alzheimer’s Disease and the Available Pharmaceuticals for Management of Its Cognitive Impairment in 2024

Alzheimer’s disease is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized mainly by neurobehavioral changes that increase in severity over time. Research about this disease is paramount as the current understanding is that this disease will increase in frequency as the population ages. This narrative review seeks to understand the mechanism of Alzheimer’s disease and employ this understanding to discuss the available pharmacological management of cognitive impairment due to Alzheimer’s disease. Our methodology began with PubMed searches for systematic literature reviews and randomized clinical trials published between 2010 and 2024 about the pharmacological management of Alzheimer’s disease. The data was extracted from these studies and then analyzed to supplement our discussion about the efficacy of the available treatments. Additional measures of clinical significance were then found through Google Scholar searches to enhance our discussion of efficacy. Our findings include those current treatments of Alzheimer’s disease resulted in statistically significant improvement of cognitive measures but only meager to moderate clinically significant benefit. Another significant finding is that the available disease-modifying therapies provide little clinically significant benefit but pose an increased risk of severe adverse events. We posit that the inability to develop efficacious treatments for Alzheimer’s disease is rooted in the lack of knowledge about Alzheimer’s Disease and the lack of effective diagnostics. Thus, there is a need for further research into Alzheimer’s disease in order to meet the needs of an aging population. This includes research into the disease’s pathophysiological processes, which will inform how to diagnose and treat or manage the disease.