Curcumin-Loaded Lipid and Polymer Nanoparticles for Alzheimer's Disease Treatment

Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is a progressive disorder that affects millions of people, and that number continues to grow each year. Currently, the exact causes of AD are not fully understood, and there are no cures are available. Recently, many studies have shown that curcumin treatment may be beneficial to AD. Nevertheless, the efficacy of curcumin is significantly limited by its low aqueous solubility and poor capacity to cross the blood-brain barrier. To address this challenge, curcumin-loaded nanoparticles have been extensively studied, showing improved efficacy for AD treatment. However, to date, comparative studies for the efficacy of curcumin delivered by different nanoparticle types for the AD treatment are lacking. In this article, I review two types of curcumin-loaded nanoparticles, polymer nanoparticles and lipid nanoparticles, and conduct a meta-analysis to compare their efficacies for the treatment of AD. The meta-analysis result indicates that there is no statistical significance in the efficacy of these two types of curcumin-loaded nanoparticles for the AD though each type of curcumin-loaded nanoparticles shows favorable outcomes in comparison to the control groups, suggesting that either polymer nanoparticles or lipid nanoparticles for curcumin delivery would be equally effective for AD treatment.