Curcumin's ability to fight Alzheimer's studied

medicalxpress.com ^ | 01/13/2015 | Provided by Vanderbilt University Medical Center

[Red Badger]

One of the most promising new treatments for Alzheimer's disease may already be in your kitchen. Curcumin, a natural product found in the spice turmeric, has been used by many Asian cultures for centuries, and a new study indicates a close chemical analog of curcumin has properties that may make it useful as a treatment for the brain disease.

"Curcumin has demonstrated ability to enter the brain, bind and destroy the beta-amyloid plaques present in Alzheimer's with reduced toxicity," said Wellington Pham, Ph.D., assistant professor of Radiology and Radiological Sciences and Biomedical Engineering at Vanderbilt and senior author of the study, published recently in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease.

Accumulation and aggregation of protein fragments, known as beta-amyloid, drives the irreversible loss of neurons in Alzheimer's disease.

Developing small molecules to reduce this accumulation or promote its demolition is crucial, but the ability of these small molecules to cross the blood-brain barrier has been a restricting factor for drug delivery into the brain.

Pham and colleagues at Shiga University of Medical Science in Otsu, Japan, developed a new strategy to deliver a molecule similar to curcumin more effectively to the brain.

"One of the difficulties in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease is how to deliver drugs across the blood brain barrier," he said. "Our body has designed this barrier to protect the brain from any toxic molecules that can cross into the brain and harm neurons.

"But it is also a natural barrier for molecules designed for disease-modifying therapy," Pham said.

To work around the problems of giving the drug intravenously, the researchers decided to develop an atomizer to generate a curcumin aerosol. The Japanese researchers developed a molecule similar to curcumin, FMeC1, which was the one actually used in this study.

"The advantage of the FMeC1 is that it is a perfluoro compound, which can be tracked by the biodistribution in the brain noninvasively using magnetic resonance imaging. Curcumin is a very simple chemical structure, so it is not expensive to generate the analog," Pham said.

"In this way the drug can be breathed in and delivered to the brain," he said, noting that nebulizers are out in the market already, and are relatively inexpensive.

"In this paper we also showed that delivery to the cortex and hippocampal areas is more efficient using aerosolized curcumin than intravenous injection in a transgenic mouse model of Alzheimer's disease," Pham said.

Explore further: Biotech company develops way to carry antibodies across blood-brain barrier to treat Alzheimer's

More information: "Inhalable curcumin: offering the potential for translation to imaging and treatment of Alzheimer's disease." J Alzheimers Dis. 2014 Sep 16. [Epub ahead of print] www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25227316

Journal reference: Journal of Alzheimer's Disease

[tinamina]

I’ve been making a turmeric-ginger “bug” for about a year. Recipes are on line.
Fermentation is supposed to make turmeric more bioavailabile. I put this “bug” in my breakfast smoothie every morning. T
Fresh turmeric root is available at health food markets.

[T-Bone Texan]

"...I use as much turmeric in cooking as I can stand. It’s rather an acquired taste..."

You are being very polite to tumeric. I'd say it tastes strongly of dirt and soil.

I take it for inflamation in my knees. I told my doc about it, and he approved, but said I'd need to put a lot in my food to get any benefit, as it is not in the best, most available format.

I told him that I did not add it to food, but rather used a heaping teaspoon + water to make a paste and just forced it down my gullet, as it is so nasty I have not found a way to mitigate the dirt taste by mixing it into other food (it just ruins the food!)

The doc said to keep doing this. He also said I cannot OD on it.

[T-Bone Texan]

What do you take coconut oil for?

[Veto!]

I'd say it tastes strongly of dirt and soil.

Cannot imagine slugging it down the way you do. I'd have to add at least an equal amount of chocolate syrup. Or Sriracha.

Actually, the Sriracha might fix your knees. YOu can just rub it on. LOL

[muggs]

to reduce inflammation. I a use it on my skin and hair, I use it to replace any oil called for in a recipe. I also use it to clean my teeth and it has eliminated my inflamed gums completely, even my dentist noticed and he said some of his other patients have mentioned using it. He can’t understand why it works but he does notice a difference in the patients that use it. I am trying it on cracked finger tips now. I have to type with my finger nails because of the split skin on my fingers.

[AppyPappy]

I mix it in V8 every morning.

I used to chase a spoonful of Cod Liver Oil with V8 but my wife finally laid down the law about the smell of the oil. Now I just take fish oil pills.

[Chickensoup]

There are turmeric pills