Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Chronic Oral Physostigmine Without Lecithin Improves Memory in Alzheimer's Disease

1989; Wiley; Volume: 37; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/j.1532-5415.1989.tb01567.x

1532-5415

Leon J. Thal, David Masur, Alan D. Blau, Paula Altman Fuld, Melville R. Klauber,

Bipolar Disorder and Treatment

Sixteen patients with early Alzheimer's disease (AD) completed a 3‐month outpatient double‐blind parallel trial of oral physostigmine versus placebo. Ten subjects received drug; six received placebo. After a dose‐titration phase, each patient was placed on his or her best dose of drug or placebo. Subjects were evaluated with both memory and nonmemory tasks. Seven of the ten drug‐treated patients, but none of the six placebo‐treated patients, demonstrated improvement on a selective reminding task, a test of verbal memory. Family members reported improvement in six of ten drug‐treated patients and none of six placebo‐treated individuals. There was a trend toward greater improvement with increasing drug dose. There was no improvement on the nonmemory tests administered. The data indicate that oral physostigmine improves memory but not other areas of cognition.