Effect of Antidepressant Medication on Alzheimer’s Disease Patients

Alzheimer’s is a chronic neurodegenerative disease. This editorial presents a study by Klaassens and collaborators, where Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging was used to project cholinergic and serotonergic neurotransmitters in Alzheimer’s disease patients and age-matched controls. The aforementioned study relied on the hypothesis that single-dose Acetylcholinesterase Inhibitors and Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors administration would act on different brain regions in Alzheimer’s disease patients versus controls. It was hypothesized that in Alzheimer’s disease patients, the above drugs would act on brain areas where the disease has been found to predominate. The single-dose method and the study’s small sample size, however, make it difficult to directly relate connectivity changes to behavioral changes after drug administration. In this editorial, I present suggestions for addressing this limitation, such as improved sampling and the use of long-term dose approaches with subjects.