Drug repurposing in Alzheimer's disease: Emerging therapeutic strategies and promising candidates.
Level 5 - mechanism / opinion, no new human data
Narrative review summarizing therapeutic strategies and candidate drugs without systematic review methodology or primary data
PubMed 41956136 · doi:10.1016/j.arr.2026.103113
What was done
This narrative review summarizes emerging drug repurposing strategies and candidate compounds for Alzheimer's disease, focusing on multifactorial targets including neuroinflammation, metabolic pathways, and mitochondrial dysfunction.
What was found
The abstract reports no quantitative data, statistics, or effect sizes. It identifies several repurposed drug classes and specific agents under investigation, including antidiabetics (metformin, GLP-1 receptor agonists), antihypertensives (candesartan), anti-inflammatories (NSAIDs, pioglitazone), neuroprotective agents (minocycline, sildenafil), and mitochondria-targeted molecules (SS-31, Mdivi-1, MitoQ, DDQ, SkQ1), alongside applications of artificial intelligence and multi-omics.
Why it matters
Given the limited clinical efficacy, safety issues, and high costs associated with approved Alzheimer's therapeutics, repurposing compounds with established safety profiles may accelerate the identification of multi-target disease-modifying options.
Limits
As a narrative review, it lacks a systematic search protocol, formal risk-of-bias assessment, and pooled quantitative data. No primary empirical results, clinical trial outcomes, or patient sample sizes are reported in the abstract.
Cited by
- supports Alzheimer's disease accounts for 70% of dementia cases.