Nutrition to halt Alzheimer's

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Currently, about 12 million people in the US plus the EU suffer from Alzheimer's, with some estimates predicting this figure will have tripled by 2050. The direct and indirect cost of Alzheimer care is over $100 bn (€ 81 bn) in the US alone. The direct cost of Alzheimer care in the UK was estimated at £15 bn (€ 22 bn).

Such is the interest in dietary approaches to improve brain health the world's largest food company, Nestlé, recently signaled its intention to get a head start on the competition with the signing of an agreement in November 2006 with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) to investigate the role of nutrition in cognitive function.

The agreement with the EPFL, Nestlé's largest collaboration with a university of research institute, will see the company contributing up to CHF 5 million (€ 3.1 million) every year for five years, with a review after four years to potentially extend the project further.

The fundamental research, by scientists from Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston and Howard University in Washington, used genetic and pharmacological approaches to change the genetic expression of transgenic fruit flies so that they would express a disease-related mutant form of human tau protein.

Two different approaches was used by the researchers - on one hand they manipulated genes responsible for the production of anti-oxidant proteins and on the other hand administered the potent anti-oxidant vitamin E to the mutant flies.

The US-based researchers report that reduction in the activity of two anti-oxidant proteins - superoxide dismutase (SOD) and thioredoxin reductases (Trxr) – as a result of their genetic manipulation led to increasing neurodegeneration in the brain of the mutant flies, while administration of vitamin E reversed the effect.

Control flies that did not express the human tau protein did not show any signs of neurodegeneration, they said.

Both results are said to indicate that oxidative stress plays an important role in neurodegenerative dementias, at least in those where the tau protein is involved, and could therefore offer a nutritional/ dietary approach to improving brain health.

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