Citicoline or CDP-Choline, which is an abbreviation for cytidine diphosphate-choline, the name of the drug used in the field of pharmaceutics. Brand name: Cognizin.
It is a well-known and wide spread psychostimulant that is used for preventing of memory impairment caused by age or some specific disease and disorders. Recent Citicoline drug studies that took place in several independent pharmaceutical laboratories around the world discovered and proved its effectiveness in improving ability to focus on particular activities avoiding unwanted dissipation of attention and mental energy, which makes it a pretty good medication for treating attention deficit problems. Besides the mentioned features, Citicoline possesses some additional characteristics that are proved to be useful for treatment of strokes, neurodegenerative disease, and head traumas. Several researches were conducted in order to prove it’s positive effects in reduction of lesions caused by ischemic strokes, however some of the specialists who took part in the researches assert that effects described above were caused by placebo effect. What is more, Citicholine is used for improvement of vision function in individuals suffering from glaucoma, non-arteric ischaemic optic neuropathy, and amblyopia. In some cases the drug was used to alleviate cocaine addiction through affecting the dopamine hormone levels in organism.
The mechanism of action. Citicoline works affects organism in several ways at the same time starting with increasing the level of dopamine and synthesizing acetylcholine that leads to synthesizing of phosphatidylcholine. Actually, the process is rather difficult for comprehension, thus we won’t describe the full mechanism but will state the main conclusions. Citicholine increases the number of neurotransmitters that are necessary for the effects described in the first paragraph, and increases the flow of some additional components such as glucose and other.
Side effects. It is certainly a strong side of the drug because its toxicity profile is very low, which appears in almost none side effects in daily dosage up to 2000mg. Numerous clinical researches showed that the only side effects that are caused by the overdose of the drug are diarrhea and stomachache, and it is very unlikely to happen, so you are risking nothing taking the drug.