The Treatment Strategies for Neurodegenerative Diseases by Integrative Medicine

Abstract

Acute and chronic neurodegenerative diseases, including prion disease, frontotemporal dementia, Pick’s disease, progressive supranuclear palsy, spinocerebellar ataxias, brain trauma, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Huntington’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and Parkinson’s disease (PD), are illnesses associated with high morbidity and mortality rates [1, 2] . A characteristic of many neurodegenerative diseases is progressive neuronal cell death [3] . During the past decade, considerable progress has been made in understanding the process of cell death [4] . The symptoms and the exacerbations of these diseases are much different according to their specific pathways of cell death, and having their own mechanisms of cell death leads to novel therapeutic strategies. Today, there is no treatment that can cure degenerative diseases, but we have many symptomatic treatments. There are some advantages of Western medicines for these diseases, such as dopaminergic treatments for PD and movement disorders [5] , cholinesterase inhibitors for cognitive disorders [6] , antipsychotic drugs for behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia [7] , analgesic drugs for pain [8] , anti-inflammatories for infections [9] , and even the use of deep brain stimulation to stop tremor and refractory movement disorders [10] . Researchers have also aimed to produce medicines to slow the development of diseases, such as Riluzole for ALS, cerebellar ataxia and Huntington’s disease [11–13] , NSAIDs (nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) for Alzheimer’s disease [14] , and caffein A2A receptor antagonists and CERE-120 (adeno-associated virus serotype 2-neurturin) for the neuroprotection of PD [15, 16] . However, we have not yet progressed very well; there still remain too many problems to administrate the progressive and serious symptoms of these diseases [5] . Including Western medicine and traditional medicine, integrative medicine [17] has its advantages in treating degenerative diseases. Integrative medicine aims to be ‘integrative’ or ‘whole’; it does not only treat the acute symptoms of these diseases, but it also considers all of the related symptoms and tries to improve the quality of activity of daily life (ADL) for the patients [18] . Non-motor disorders is one refractory symptom of PD, such as sleep disorders, Received: March 4, 2015 Accepted after revision: March 10, 2015 Published online: April 28, 2015