Traditional Chinese Medicine for Alzheimer's Disease: Current Evidence and Chemometric Approaches for Multi-Target...

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder for which there is currently no therapy that can fundamentally change the disease course. The limitations of single-target drugs have led the scientific community to turn to multi-target intervention strategies. In this context, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) demonstrates potential in addressing the complex pathology of AD due to its "multi-component, multi-target, multi-pathway" overall regulatory characteristics. This review systematically reviews the current research status of TCM in the treatment of AD, with a particular focus on the evidence of its effects through multiple mechanisms such as reducing Aβ deposition, inhibiting excessive phosphorylation of Tau protein, regulating the cholinergic system, and alleviating neuroinflammation. Additionally, this article highlights how to utilize the "spectral efficacy relationship" combined with chemometrics methods (such as multiple regression, partial least squares regression, artificial neural networks, etc) to establish quantitative correlations between TCM chemical components and efficacy/clinical endpoints, thereby providing a methodological framework for evaluating the synergistic effects of TCM's multi-component interactions. The article also summarizes the evidence grades of currently commonly used TCM preparations in clinical practice and points out that future research needs to continuously deepen in areas such as standardized clinical endpoints, strict trial design, systematic safety assessment, and data-driven efficacy analysis. This review aims to provide theoretical references and research directions for integrating the holistic view of TCM with modern system analysis methods and promoting the development of multi-target treatment strategies for AD.