Treatment strategies for senile dementia: antagonist β-carbolines

An effective pharmacological treatment for senile dementia is not yet available and even the therapeutic potency of muscarinic agonists has been rather disappointing up to now. Different lines of evidence and a hypothesis are presented below suggesting that β-carbolines with antagonist or partial inverse agonist properties at the GABA-benzodiazepine receptor complex may offer a treatment for senile dementia primarily by disinhibiting the remaining cholinergic neurons of basal forebrain. Preclinical behavioral and biochemical data, as well as studies with human volunteers, support the idea that such β-carbolines exert nootropic effects in general.