Journal of Alzheimers Disease & Parkinsonism
Open Access

Review Article

The Prevention of Alzheimer's Disease and Parkinson's Disease by Monascus purpureus NTU 568-Fermented Compounds

¹Department of Life Science, National Taitung University, Taitung, Taiwan, ROC

²Department of Biochemical Science and Technology, National Taiwan University, Taipei 106, Taiwan, ROC

³Department of Research and Development, SunWay Biotechnology Company, Taipei 114, Taiwan, ROC

Corresponding Author:

Tzu Ming Pan
Department of Biochemical Science and Technology
College of Life Science, National Taiwan University
No. 1, Sec. 4, Roosevelt Road, Taipei
10617 Taiwan, ROC
Tel: 886-233664519
E-mail: tmpan@ntu.edu.tw

Received date: June 09, 2017; Accepted date: June 28, 2017; Published date: July 05, 2017

Citation: Lee CL, Pan TM (2017) The Prevention of Alzheimer's Disease and Parkinson’s Disease by Monascus purpureus NTU 568-Fermented Compounds. J Alzheimers Dis Parkinsonism 7:342. doi:10.4172/2161-0460.1000342

Copyright: © 2017 Lee CL, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Parkinson’s disease (PD), which are senile neurodegenerative diseases, have become more common in recent year. An important cause for AD is currently the deposition of amyloid β (Aβ) in the brain, leading to severe oxidative stress and inflammation, as well as neuronal death and memory damage in AD patients. PD is a chronic degeneration of the central nervous system that mainly affects the motor system. Its symptoms usually appear gradually, and are most obviously tremors, body stiffness, slowed movement, and gait abnormality during early stage; though the mechanism for the death of dopaminergic neurons is not yet completely understood, oxidative stress has been shown to be a very important factor in triggering the development of PD in many human and animal studies. As has been revealed in past research, fermented products of Monascus and their extracts can effectively improve the course of AD and PD, possessing significant preventative and alleviating effects. The main effectors are confirmed to be monascin and ankaflavin for AD treatment, and dimerumic acid and deferricoprogen for PD treatment. This review, therefore, focuses on the analysis and comprehensive discussion of these four active components, for an overall understanding of their role in the AD and PD improvement function of Monascus fermented products.

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