Ginkgo biloba as a memory booster? Forget about it.

If you’ve made a New Year’s resolution to save money, here’s one suggestion: Stop buying ginkgo biloba pills to boost your brainpower.

Ginkgo is a popular – and unregulated – herbal remedy that was thought to prevent the cognitive decline associated with Alzheimer’s disease and general aging. It is prescribed by some doctors in Europe to preserve memory. On this side of the pond, the pills are touted for their ability to “improve mental sharpness, concentration, memory and cognitive ability,” according to one manufacturer.

There is some basic science to support that notion. According to this Los Angeles Times story from last year:

Ginkgo biloba contains flavonoids, whose antioxidant properties have been shown to combat the chemical damage that accumulates in aging brain cells. One laboratory study also found that ginkgo extract prevents the accumulation of beta-amyloid proteins which cluster into plaque in the brains of Alzheimer's patients.

"There are a lot of purported reasons why ginkgo might work," said Richard L. Nahin, a neuroscientist at the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, who worked on the study.

But as that story reported, a randomized clinical trial involving more than 3,000 senior citizens found that gingko biloba did nothing to prevent or delay dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.

Today, the same team of researchers from the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) and universities across the country reported that ginkgo also failed to reduce or slow cognitive decline in older adults.

About half the subjects – who ranged in age from 72 to 96 – took 120-milligram ginkgo tablets twice a day for an average of more than six years. The rest took an identical-looking placebo. All participants had normal mental function or mild cognitive impairment when the study began.

The rate of annual decline in cognitive function was the same for both groups, according to the new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. The team didn’t find any differences even when looking at specific functions like memory, attention, visuospatial abilities, language, or executive functions. Age, sex, race, education and version of the apolipoprotein E gene (which is linked to risk of Alzheimer’s) also had no impact.

NCCAM, a branch of the National Institutes of Health, has been researching ginkgo for 10 years to see whether the type of clinical trials required for FDA-regulated pharmaceuticals would reveal any benefit. The new findings are in line with several other studies, including a Cochrane review published this year that found “no convincing evidence” that the herb preserves mental function in any way.

-- Karen Kaplan

Photo: It's time to give up on ginkgo, researchers agree. Credit: Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times

Comments

[Gene Berkman]

I have tinnitus - ringing in the ears - and Gingko is the only thing I have used that is able to control the ringing. It has made my life much better because of this.

[m v]

I agree - reduces tinnitus, helps with vertigo attacks, reduces fluid build up to name but a few benefits.
But you need to take at least 6g per day so the study doesn't mean a jot!
Also they used aged subjects so not very good study group. Did they take into account all the other factors i.e aluminium cooking pan residue, chemical intake through food and water - so many variables so the study is useless, just a scaremongering tactic to support the codex agenda and support big pharma instead

[Jez]

Well, I think it may only work if you begin taking it when you're no older than your late 30's. Otherwise, the ship is likely to have already begun sinking.

[Steve Hall]

I think the primary benefit is that it increases O2 supply, which benefits brain function, but I'm not surprised it doesn't ward off Alzheimer's.

It has been found to prevent altitude sickness (i.e., increase O2) http://www.everestnews.com/stories024/peterh.htm

[cshining]

Where is the randomized study that shows 6g per day is what you need?

[JA]

So, basing her opinion on a study that used test subjects all over 72 years old, the author concludes that no one (of any age, it seems) should take ginko biloba, that no one could gain any benefit from it.
In that spirit, I'd like to officially present some of my own findings and draw an equally valid conclusion from them.
I have witnessed that a vast majority of people 72 to 96 years old have extreme difficulty climbing stairs. I therefore reach the conclusion that no one should use stairs, because my study obviously proves that they are an ineffective, slow and dangerous method of gaining altitude, for people of all ages.
(this opinion brought to you by the elevator company lobbying group of America).
Which are you attempting to debunk, Ms. Kaplan, that ginko does not "boost" memory function, or that it does not prevent it's decline? You've made both claims in the title and body of your piece, implying that they are one in the same. They're not, much the same way that saving money is not the same as earning money. One is maintenance (preventing loss), the other is acquiring more.
I'm in my 40's, not suffering from "dementia [or] cognitive impairment", and Alzheimer's is not a concern for me, but I would like to increase my memory and mental function. Would ginko work for me?
Your piece concludes that it would not, but offers no proof and cites no appropriate study.
Illogical poop.

[gg]

What about for younger adults and those without Alzheimer’s disease who take it as a preventive measure? Is there any study out there that proves it less or more effective? This story only gave a slice of what is being studied, yet the headline was very alarming and definitive.

[Get a room there, boys!]

Face it folks, GB does nothing but put your money into the hands of the unregulated "supplement" industry... another word for "little pharma." I bet sugar pills would have the same effect on tinnitus, or any other malady, if the taker was told it would help.

Americans need to quit wasting money on miracle cures and stop buying the BS that by taking some pill you'll be sharp as a tack until you're 100, look like you're 19 when you're 50, be hung like a moose and have sex like a demon 24 hours after you're dead, etc. These goofy claims are touted by folks that sell nothing but false hope, snake oil, and faith healing...Here's a cheaper, proven solution to a healthier old age; eat right, don't smoke or drink to excess, exercise your body and your brain daily. Voila'! Good health for free.

[Bruce]

The headline should read "Gingko Biloba as Alzheimer's Figher? Forget about it" because that's what the study seems to have addressed, and not the gb-memory relationship in the general population.

Silly, sensationalist headlines - part of the reason why I'd pay for online access to the New York Times, but not the LA Times.

[Polomoche]

Ostensible objectivity of scientific method notwithstanding, the science community seems to have a vendetta against herbal remedies. The true impetus of these studies is more often or not to illustrate their inefficacy rather than to neutrally determine if and how they might work. Given this built-in bias, I would scrutinize the interpretive/subjective portion of the study in which "the team didn’t find any differences even when looking at specific functions like memory, attention, visuospatial abilities, language, or executive functions"... That having been said, it is just as silly to assume herbal remedies are effective when they may not be at all; I only wish the investigators were less subject to suspicion.

[John Bollwerk]

There are many significant limitations of this study.

First, the data being published this week are drawn from a previous clinical trial which was not designed to determine the decline in cognition. (3)

Second, about 40% of the subjects dropped out over the 6-year duration of the trial; the statistics reported in the study include the dropouts for which no final data are available.

Further, the subjects in the study were not monitored for certain cognitive parameters until several years after the trial began, creating difficulty in determining accurately whether they experienced a decline in cognition or not.

Also, the age of the subjects is quite advanced, at an average of 79 years at the beginning of the trial. This age group is not typical of the age of both healthy people and those with mild cognitive impairment who use ginkgo for improving mental performance.

Another weakness of this trial is the lack of an active control, i.e., a potential third arm of the trial (i.e., besides the patients on ginkgo or placebo) in which patients would have used a pharmaceutical medication with presumed efficacy, to determine to what extent the particular population being tested would respond. This was not possible for this trial since no conventional pharmaceutical drug has ever demonstrated the ability to prevent the onset of dementia or diminish its progression.

Several recent publications have demonstrated an improvement in cognitive performance in subjects using the same German gingko extract. (4, 5, 6)

The new publication, by Beth E. Snits, Ph.D., a neuropsychologist associated with the University of Pittsburgh, and other colleagues, analyzed outcomes from the Ginkgo Evaluation of Memory study (GEM, published in 2008 in JAMA)( )to determine if ginkgo extract slowed cognitive decline in older adults who had either normal cognition or mild cognitive impairment at the beginning of the study.(3)

The GEM study previously found that ginkgo extract was not effective in reducing the incidence of Alzheimer dementia or dementia overall. This large, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multi-centered clinical trial included 3,069 community-dwelling subjects (aged 72 to 96 years) who received either a dose of 120 mg of ginkgo extract twice daily or an identical-appearing placebo. The trial was conducted at 6 academic medical centers in the United States between 2000 and 2008, with a median follow-up of 6.1 years. Change in cognitive function was evaluated by various tests and measures.

The original GEM trial was designed to determine whether taking ginkgo would prevent the onset of dementia. What this new publication has done is attempted to analyze the possible decline in levels of cognitive function -- not a primary outcome measure of the GEM study.

This trial is not conclusive nor should it in any way detract from ginkgo's reputation as a useful dietary supplement to help support and improve cognitive function and enhance peripheral circulation -- conditions for which it has been reported to be effective in numerous clinical trials.

At least 16 controlled clinical trials have evaluated various ginkgo extracts for healthy, non-cognitively impaired adults. A systematic review has shown that in 11 of these trials, the ginkgo increased short-term memory, concentration and time to process mental tasks. (7)

The results of this new trial must be viewed in proper perspective. There is a vast body of pharmacological and clinical research supporting numerous health benefits for ginkgo extracts.

The trial utilized EGb 761(R), the world's most clinically tested ginkgo extract, produced by W. Schwabe Pharmaceuticals in Karlsruhe, Germany.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/herbal-science-organization-clarifies-new-ginkgo-study-80288477.html

[AA]

I am reposting what I wrote on the Wall Street Journal blog regarding this issue.

I would have liked to have known the percentage of participants who were on meds and how many they are on since side effects of meds can lead to memory loss. While certain people on meds like psych were excluded, I noticed that people on other meds weren’t excluded like folks on cholesterol meds. Those have been linked to memory loss.

This is also important to know since according to this link, http://tinyurl.com/yfzfdok, 51% of seniors take 5 prescriptions daily.

*

[Lao Tzo]

Ahh those corporate bastards are at it again...
If you’ve made a New Year’s resolution to save money, here’s one suggestion:

Stop buying into non-sense like this and go with what you know is right. You can either spend money on over priced poisonous medications that only make you sicker or spend money on a plant that has had centuries worth of good reports. Seems like pretty simple logic to me. But then again where's the profit in that - if you're the federal government that is.