New review article on the effect of Transcranial Pulse Stimulation on Alzheimer’s
Transcranial Pulse Stimulation (TPS) gaining importance thanks to increasing evidence
Around 55 million people suffer from dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, and it is estimated that this number will almost double in the next 20 years. Therefore, it is important to find new therapeutic options that can complement current therapies and improve the quality of life of patients and their families. Transcranial Pulse Stimulation (TPS) is a non-invasive therapy that has been gaining ground in recent years with increasing supporting evidence. A new qualitative systematic review summarizes the available studies and discusses whether TPS is a beneficial treatment for AD patients. 1
Methods
Papers indexed in PubMed, Google Scholar and Cochrane databases were searched from 2001 to 2022 and the following terms were used (in title/abstract): “transcranial pulse stimulation”, “focused ultrasound”, “non-invasive treatment and Alzheimer” and “TPS”. Only manuscripts from peer-reviewed journals, written in English and published after 2001, were included. In total, from 84 hits, 75 articles were retrieved for detailed inspection and 5 fulfilled all inclusion criteria.
Results and conclusion
Based on the reviewed studies and their own experience, the authors conclude that TPS is a safe and tolerable option for patients with Alzheimer’s disease that can be used to complement other treatments. The novel approach not only improves patients’ cognitive performance and quality of life, but also reduces depressive symptoms and apathy, which are often more disabling than the cognitive deficits. The authors hypothesize that TPS could be acting on cognitive symptoms through several mechanisms.
The authors summarize that overall, TPS represents a promising line of research that raises the chances of patients to achieve a clinical improvement together with a better prognosis. To support the available evidence, they emphasize the need for further studies that are randomized, double-blind, and placebo-controlled.
Sources:
1 Fernández-Castaño R, Fernández-Blázquez MÁ, Echevarría Fernández I, Cabrera-Freitag M, Freitag K. Effect of Transcranial Pulse Stimulation for the Treatment of Alzheimer´s Disease and its Related Symptoms. Curr Alzheimer Res. 2023;20(4):244-249. DOI: 10.2174/1567205020666230727102025. PMID: 37497687.
An overview of the TPS studies and other scientific work on the neurostimulation method Transcranial Pulse Stimulation (TPS) can be found here:
