Hey all, welcome back to the real-life pharmacology podcast. I am your host, Eric Christensen, pharmacist.

I appreciate you taking the time to listen today. Today is, we're going to talk about acetylcholine esterase inhibitors.

More specifically, the acetylcholine esterase inhibitor I see used in practice most, which is Denepazil.

The brand name for that medication is Erosept,

and it is utilized in the management of dementia,

mostly Alzheimer's dementia, with a few exceptions there.

So getting into the mechanism of action, Alzheimer's dementia, with a few exceptions there.

So getting into the mechanism of action, so in dementia and Alzheimer's dementia specifically,

there is what researchers have found is that there's low cholinergic activity and this activity through

acetylcholine and other mediators is reduced and it's obviously very important for

memory recall and things of that nature. So that reduced activity, obviously what the drug is going to target is try to preserve those molecules in the brain,

which hopefully helps patients symptomatically.

Two very, very important points with this mechanism of action.

So it does not stop dementia and it does not reverse dementia. So those are two very, very important things

that patients, caregivers must understand.

The progression of dementia is going to continue on.

They're going to continue to get worse.

The goal, the hope of the medication is that it helps somewhat with symptoms,

maybe a little bit of memory recall,

but they are going to continue to get worse over time.

So that's very important to remember that these are not a cure for dementia and patients need to be,

and caregivers need to be educated about that. So kind of wrapping up this mechanism of action.

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