How Anticholinergic Drugs Might Promote Alzheimer’s Disease: More Amyloid-β and Less Phosphatidylcholine

Abstract

Drugs that block muscarinic cholinergic neurotransmission in the brain can, as a consequence, increase the formation of amyloid-β, and decrease brain levels of phosphatidylcholine (by slowing its synthesis and accelerating its turnover). Both of these effects might cause a decrease in brain synapses, as characterizes and probably underlies the memory disorder of early Alzheimer’s disease.