Experimental Models for Elucidating the Pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s Disease: A Brief Review

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is one of the leading factors of dementia and other cognitive problems despite that there is no curative treatment for the cure of that disease currently. This is mainly due to the pathological features of disease accompanied by the extracellular senile plaques and also the intracellular neurofibrillary tangles which leads to synaptic as well as neuronal loss. This feature occurs prior to memory loss which is irreversible and becomes severe at the stage of clinical diagnosis. At this stage experimental models of AD proved to be better tool in achieving some of the novel therapeutic approaches and also in the development of pathogenic knowledge about the disease. The most commonly used animal model is APP transgenic mice. This model directly corelates the accumulation of senile plaques leading to the disease by expressing the genes associated with the familiar AD. This experimental model proved to be a useful tool for therapeutic screening. Although these models are not highly efficient in revealing the disease but they gave us an insight idea about the pathological changes which occur in AD. In this report we will discuss about the different models used and how they are helpful in revealing the pathogenesis of AD.