Efficacy of Chinese herbal compound GAPT for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease during mouse/rat studies: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract Objective To evaluate the efficacy of the Chinese herbal compound GAPT for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and to provide current evidence for potential treatment mechanisms. Methods A comprehensive search of PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, SinoMed, China Network Knowledge Infrastructure, Wanfang Data, and Chinese Scientific Journals Database was performed to identify GAPT mouse/rat studies published from inception to July 2019. The outcomes extracted were Morris water maze results and molecular biological quantifications. Results A total of 19 studies were included in this analysis. The analysis indicated that GAPT was able to significantly improve learning and memory abilities compared with model mice/rats, as assessed by Morris water maze, and showed similar efficacy as donepezil. Subgroup analyses showed that low, medium, and high doses resulted in no obvious dose-dependent effects. Additionally, the GAPT group had significantly reduced expression levels of amyloid-beta peptide, presenilin 1, phosphorylated tau, acetylcholinesterase, and glycogen synthase kinase-3β, but increased expression levels of Shank1, and protein phosphatase-2A, and improved synapses structures compared with the model group, and subgroup analyses showed the medium dose of GAPT was superior to the low and high doses. Conclusions Based on the pooled analysis, GAPT improved the learning and memory abilities and regulated the expression levels of related proteins during the progression of AD in mouse/rat studies. Notably, the medium dose of GAPT exhibited better performance than the other two doses, providing experimental evidence for further applications of GAPT during clinical practice.