Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a common neurodegenerative disease in the elderly population. It's typical clinical manifestation is progressive memory impairment. Ferroptosis, rising as a new research direction on AD biological mechanism in recent years, mainly studies on iron-dependent programmed cell death. A large amount of evidence has shown that AD is closely related to ferroptosis in the brain. However, the exact mechanism of the role ferroptosis has played in AD is still unclear. One of the most popular research results indicates that AD might be induced by iron metabolism disorders, lipid peroxidation, and amino acid metabolism, thereby affecting the deposition of iron ions in the brain. So far, some effective chemical components of traditional Chinese herbs as cures of AD have been studied in depth, such as rhodiola rosea, polygala root, ginkgo biloba, poria cocos, etc. These traditional Chinese herbs have shown remarkable effects in the treatment of AD by means of targeting ferroptosis. In this context, this review systematically elaborates on the metabolism of iron in the brain, the characteristics of ferroptosis, and focuses on the metabolic regulation mechanism of ferroptosis. Meanwhile, this review also discusses the connection between ferroptosis and AD. Furthermore, it lists the effective compositions in traditional Chinese herbs that can improve AD by inhibiting ferroptosis, so as to provide reference information for the development and research of ferroptosis inhibitors in the future.

阿尔茨海默病（AD）是一种老年人群中常见的神经退行性疾病，其典型临床表现是进行性记忆障碍。铁死亡是近些年新兴起的潜在的生物学机制研究方向，是一种铁依赖性程序性细胞死亡方式，大量证据表明AD与大脑中的铁死亡密切相关，然而其参与AD的确切机制尚不清楚，其可能由铁代谢紊乱、脂质过氧化和氨基酸代谢诱导，从而影响大脑中铁离子的沉积。迄今为止，部分中药有效化学成分已被深入研究，例如红景天、远志、银杏、茯苓等，这些中药在靶向铁死亡治疗AD的过程中展现出了显著的效果。在此背景下，本综述系统阐述了大脑中铁的代谢、铁死亡的特点，并重点关注铁死亡代谢调控机制。同时，本文还讨论了铁死亡和AD的联系，并同时列举了中药的有效成分通过抑制铁死亡改善AD的药物，以期为今后铁死亡抑制剂的开发研究提供参考信息。