Pharmacodynamic and early clinical studies with velnacrine

The paper reviews the results obtained with velnacrine, a cholinesterase inhibitor and potential Alzheimer's disease agents, in early clinical studies in healthy volunteers and patients with probable Alzheimer's disease (AD). In healthy subjects, the compound was demonstrated to reverse cognitive impairment induced by scopolamine. Single doses of velnacrine improved performance of patients with AD in simple recognition tasks and enhanced regional cerebral blood flow in prefrontal-parietal areas. In a short crossover-study, velnacrine was demonstrated to be significantly (< 0.05) superior to placebo in the cognitive behaviour subscale of the ADAS, a word recognition task and, in trend, also on the Clinical Global Impression of Improvement.