Early Intervention with EVOO Shows Promise in Reducing Down Syndrome Symptoms

Extra vir­gin olive oil could play a key role in com­bat­ing cog­ni­tive degen­er­a­tion in peo­ple with Down syn­drome.

A new study con­ducted using a mouse model of Down syn­drome has shown that extra vir­gin olive oil can sig­nif­i­cantly improve mem­ory and cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties.

“Historically, olive oil has been pri­mar­ily asso­ci­ated with car­dio­vas­cu­lar ben­e­fits,” Domenico Praticò, pro­fes­sor of neural sci­ences at Temple University in Philadelphia and founder of the Alzheimer’s Center at Temple, told Olive Oil Times.

“For a long time, the brain was not con­sid­ered to be an entity affected by the con­sump­tion of extra vir­gin olive oil. In real­ity, an increas­ing num­ber of stud­ies are show­ing that the pos­i­tive effects of extra vir­gin olive oil also extend to brain health,” Praticò explained.

In their lat­est study pub­lished in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, Praticò’s research team explained how indi­vid­u­als with Down syn­drome often develop cog­ni­tive decline and Alzheimer-like patholo­gies as early as age 40, much ear­lier than the gen­eral pop­u­la­tion.

“Thanks to phar­ma­co­log­i­cal advance­ments and new sur­gi­cal tech­niques, the life expectancy of peo­ple with Down syn­drome has sig­nif­i­cantly increased, often extend­ing well beyond 50 years,” Praticò said.

Between 60 and 70 per­cent of these indi­vid­u­als start to develop cog­ni­tive issues much ear­lier than peo­ple with­out Down syn­drome. ​“It’s not exactly Alzheimer’s dis­ease, but they are extremely sim­i­lar con­di­tions,” Praticò said.

“Given the grow­ing evi­dence of extra vir­gin olive oil’s role, our study aimed to inves­ti­gate whether early inter­ven­tion with extra vir­gin olive oil could have a pos­i­tive impact on this pop­u­la­tion,” he explained.

To ver­ify the effi­cacy of extra vir­gin olive oil, the team used an ani­mal model of Down syn­drome, treat­ing the mice with a diet enriched with extra vir­gin olive oil for five months.

Researchers chose a Coratina mono­va­ri­etal extra vir­gin olive oil pro­duced in Puglia, Italy, due to its sig­nif­i­cant phe­no­lic pro­file.

At the end of the treat­ment, cog­ni­tive tests were con­ducted to eval­u­ate the ani­mals’ learn­ing and mem­ory abil­i­ties.

“Memory tests on ani­mals, such as the Morris Water Maze, allow us to mea­sure how quickly mice learn to find a hid­den plat­form,” Praticò said.

“We observed that mice treated with extra vir­gin olive oil were much faster in learn­ing and recall­ing com­pared to their untreated coun­ter­parts,” he added.

Another inter­est­ing aspect of the research was the effect of extra vir­gin olive oil on synapses, the con­nec­tions between nerve cells respon­si­ble for trans­mit­ting infor­ma­tion in the brain.

Experiments showed mice treated with extra vir­gin olive oil exhib­ited improved synap­tic func­tion, as mea­sured through elec­tro­phys­i­ol­ogy tech­niques.

“The synapses were func­tion­ing more effi­ciently, sug­gest­ing that extra vir­gin olive oil has a pro­tec­tive effect on neu­ronal con­nec­tions,” Praticò said.

Moreover, extra vir­gin olive oil sig­nif­i­cantly reduced lev­els of neuro-inflam­ma­tion, a process closely linked to cog­ni­tive decline and neuro-degen­er­a­tion.

“We dis­cov­ered that extra vir­gin olive oil can mod­u­late the activ­ity of microglia, cells that, among other things, act as scav­engers in the brain,” Praticò said.

“These cells, under chronic stress con­di­tions, can end up dam­ag­ing the brain instead of help­ing it,” he added. ​“Thanks to extra vir­gin olive oil, the microglia remain in a more bal­anced state and can con­tinue to per­form their ben­e­fi­cial func­tion.”

A cru­cial aspect of the study was the in-depth analy­sis of inflam­ma­tory mark­ers in the brains of mice treated with extra vir­gin olive oil.

In par­tic­u­lar, extra vir­gin olive oil has shown to sig­nif­i­cantly impact var­i­ous cytokines, pro­teins that reg­u­late the immune system’s inflam­ma­tory response.

Among the mark­ers ana­lyzed, inter­leukins are cru­cial in mod­u­lat­ing brain inflam­ma­tion, a phe­nom­e­non closely asso­ci­ated with cog­ni­tive decline and neuro-degen­er­a­tion.

Praticò’s team observed a sig­nif­i­cant reduc­tion in mol­e­cules like inter­leukin-12 and CD40, both known to pro­mote microglial acti­va­tion.

“The sup­pres­sion of CD40 is par­tic­u­larly rel­e­vant because this pro­tein is often involved in acti­vat­ing microglia and in the pro­duc­tion of other pro-inflam­ma­tory cytokines like inter­leukin-12,” Praticò said. ​“Reducing the activ­ity of these mol­e­cules helps mit­i­gate one fac­tor that accel­er­ates cog­ni­tive decline.”

At the same time, there was an increase in Interleukin 1 Receptor Antagonist (IL-1ra) and Interleukin 5, both asso­ci­ated with neu­ro­pro­tec­tive effects.

“IL-1ra acts as a brake on inflam­ma­tion induced by interleukin‑1, one of the most potent cytokines in pro­mot­ing inflam­ma­tory responses,” Praticò explained.

These find­ings indi­cate that extra vir­gin olive oil reduces brain inflam­ma­tion and acts selec­tively, pro­mot­ing the expres­sion of mol­e­cules that pro­tect nerve cells.

“Our study sug­gests that extra vir­gin olive oil could alter the brain’s ​‘inflam­ma­tory pro­file’ in a pos­i­tive way, slow­ing the neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive process not only in Alzheimer’s but also in other con­di­tions like Down syn­drome,” Praticò remarked.

According to the sci­en­tists, the results of this research open the door to new ther­a­peu­tic approaches for dis­eases like Alzheimer’s and other forms of demen­tia.

Extra vir­gin olive oil, with its bioac­tive com­po­nents includ­ing oleo­can­thal, olea­cein and oleu­ropein, could rep­re­sent a nat­ural weapon in the fight against cog­ni­tive decline.

In a con­text where the pop­u­la­tion is aging and demen­tia is becom­ing more com­mon, dis­cov­er­ing new pre­ven­tive tools is cru­cial. ​“We are only at the begin­ning of this explo­ration,” Praticò said.

“But if we can demon­strate that some­thing as sim­ple as extra vir­gin olive oil can make a dif­fer­ence, then we will have found an acces­si­ble way to improve the qual­ity of life for many,” he con­cluded.