`Extra Virgin Olive Oil May Prevent Alzheimer’s Disease - Olive Oil Times

Extra Virgin Olive Oil May Prevent Alzheimer’s Disease

By Elena Paravantes
Aug. 29, 2013 09:33 UTC

Italian researchers from the University of Florence have found that extra vir­gin olive oil polyphe­nols may pre­vent or delay the appear­ance of Alzheimer’s dis­ease.

For this study that was pub­lished in PLOS One, a peer reviewed, open access jour­nal, mouse mod­els of Alzheimer’s dis­ease were given oleu­ropein agly­cone, the main polyphe­nol found in extra vir­gin olive oil for 8 weeks. The results showed that dietary sup­ple­men­ta­tion of oleu­ropein agly­cone strongly improved the cog­ni­tive per­for­mance of the mice com­pared to the group that did not receive the olive oil polyphe­nol.

The sci­en­tists also con­ducted mem­ory per­for­mance tests and noted that in the mouse model, cog­ni­tive impair­ment was com­pletely pre­vented by oleu­ropein agly­cone admin­is­tra­tion to the mice.

While it is not the first time that olive oil and the Mediterranean diet appear to pro­tect from Alzheimer’s, this research adds more evi­dence that, at least in part, these ben­e­fits can be traced back to the intake of extra vir­gin olive oil and its main polyphe­nol, oleu­ropein agly­cone.

The Polyphenol Oleuropein Aglycone Protects TgCRND8 Mice against Aß Plaque Pathology (PLOS One)

The researchers con­cluded that their results sup­port the pos­si­bil­ity that dietary sup­ple­men­ta­tion with extra vir­gin olive oil may pre­vent or delay the occur­rence of Alzheimer’s dis­ease and reduce the sever­ity of its symp­toms.


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