Pathophysiology of neurodegenerative disease and available treatments: Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Abstract

Amyotrophic lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is an adult-onset neurogenerative disease. It affects the motor neurons resulting in muscle weakness and causing death of the patient. Multiple factors like genetic, environmental, as well as age involved in the etiopathogenesis of ALS. ALS is a highly complex and equally challenging disease that involves various pathogenesis linked with progressive motor neuron degeneration, it is difficult to have a single therapeutic target against the disease. Till date only a few drugs have been FDA-approved, while many are still under clinical trials. Hence reducing the number of viable treatment options. Some drugs like Riluzole, Tafamidis, and Edaravon are the only drugs given to ALS patients. As data suggest, these drugs exceed the lifespan of ALS patients by only a few months, but are unable to treat ALS permanently. In this review, we are discussing the pathophysiology mechanism and the presently available drug treatment for the pathophysiology of ALS. All the data are collected from PubMed open sources