Ginkgo suffers another blow
January 7th 2010 02:21
Signature Tune
From: The Washington Post
There's more evidence that ginkgo biloba is useless for protecting the brain, despite claims to the contrary.
The herbal remedy is heavily promoted and widely used as a way to stave off mental decline. But attempts to verify those claims with carefully conducted studies have failed to confirm the benefits. A previous report found no evidence that ginkgo could reduce the risk of developing the devastating brain disorder Alzheimer's disease.
In the new research, the same group of investigators looked at whether ginkgo could slow the general decline in cognitive abilities that many people experience as they age. Steven DeKosky of the University of Virginia School of Medicine and his colleagues studied 3,069 volunteers ages 72 to 96 around the country who had not yet begun to lose their mental edge or had only mild cognitive problems. Half took 120 milligrams of ginkgo twice a day while the other half took a placebo.
Tests that measured attention, memory, language and other thinking abilities found no difference in the rate of decline in these abilities between the two groups over about six years, the researchers report in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The study is the largest of its kind, and is consistent with the results of earlier, smaller studies.
-- Rob Stein
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