Ginkgo Biloba Herb Does Not Slow Alzheimer’s Progression
November 19, 2008
Washington (dbTechno) - According to a new study, the herbal supplement ginkgo biloba does not slow the progression of Alzheimer’s in any such way.
The study was led by Dr. Steven DeKosky of the University of Virginia School of Medicine and looked at a total of roughly 3,000 people all over the age of 75.
For the study, they tracked the patients at various locations around the U.S. for a period of, on average, six years.
Every single day, half of those in the study took 120 milligrams of extract from the herb ginkgo bilopa twice each day, while the other half took a placebo.
What they found was that the patients who took the ginkgo were not any less likely to develop any type of dementia, including Alzheimer’s.
On top of that, the risk factors were exactly the same in regards to the progression of the disease.
Researchers stated that they were very disappointed with the results of the study.
The hope was that the antioxidant in the ginkgo would have been able to help with dementia.
The study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
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This may be true however one natural compound has shown positive effects. The compound resveratrol has shown interesting neuroprotective properties in clinical trials. Drs. Anderson and Setia reported in a January 2008 paper that of 121 subjects with moderate to severe memory loss 94 of those patients given biotivia Transmax, an extract of red wine used by researchers, showed marked improvement in short term memory, improved motor skills and improved physical coordination. Resveratrol works by activating the human Sirt 1 gene much like caloric restriction does. Sirtris pharma is developing a synthetic version of transmax which it intends to have on the market in five years. In another study by Dr. Sinclair of Harvard published in the journal Nature in November transmax resveratrol was shown to increase the life span of obese mammals by 31%. This is an exciting area of research and could lead to some revolutionary new preventative strategies and safer less invasive treatments for Alzheimers disease. In Dr. Sinclair’s study of obese mice he found that those fed resveratrol lived 31% longer and were free of cardiovascular diseases.