%0 Journal Article
%T Efficacy of Music Therapy in Treatment for the Patients with Alzheimer¡¯s Disease
%A H. Fukui
%A A. Arai
%A K. Toyoshima
%J International Journal of Alzheimer's Disease
%D 2012
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2012/531646
%X We report that music therapy is effective in the treatment of Alzheimer¡¯s disease. We found that the secretion of 17 -estradiol and testosterone, hormones that are supposed to have preventive effects on Alzheimer¡¯s disease, is significantly increased by music therapy. During the sessions, patients with Alzheimer¡¯s disease were allowed to listen to music and songs with verbal contact from the therapist. It was found that problematic behaviors such as poriomania (fugue) had decreased. Music therapy has the potential as an alternative treatment for adverse hormone replacement therapy. 1. Introduction In both sexes, sex hormone levels decrease with aging. These reductions have been correlated to various symptoms in the elderly including diminished cognitive function, disturbance of memory, mind and mood, depression, and climacteric disturbance [1]. In an attempt to mitigate these symptoms, hormone replacement therapies are administered, for example, estrogen in females and androgen in males [2¨C4] and females [5, 6]. Even within the elderly population, sex hormone levels are lower in Alzheimer patients than in healthy counterparts [4, 7]. In Alzheimer¡¯s disease, the aging-related reductions in sex hormones, especially estrogen, represent a critical risk factor [8¨C10]. This is because estrogen protects the nerves and acts to control cell proliferation. Moreover, estrogen decreases the ¦Â amyloid peptide content in the neurons which is a typical pathologic finding in Alzheimer¡¯s disease [11, 12] and protects the body from neurotoxicity from ¦Â peptide [13, 14]. Estrogen has also shown to suppress the increase and deposition of ¦Â-amyloid and to prevent nerve cell damage [12, 15, 16]. In addition to these effects on amyloid metabolism, estrogen improves cognitive function and delays the onset of dementia by increasing cholinergic activity in the brain, stimulating axonal budding and dendrite formation and retarding cerebral arteriosclerosis [9]. Hence, estrogen replacement therapy has been recommended as a prophylaxis of Alzheimer¡¯s disease in particular for the elderly female patients with decreased estrogen levels [8, 17]. In actual clinical settings, estrogen is used to treat postmenopausal women with Alzheimer¡¯s disease and has shown its effect to improve their verbal memory and attention remarkably [18¨C20]. It has also shown that the onset of dementia is delayed significantly in elderly women who had been receiving estrogen for long periods than those who had not [21¨C23]. Another report shows that the incidence of Alzheimer¡¯s disease was significantly lower
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijad/2012/531646/