Can Turmeric Treat Alzheimer's?

A compound found in the spice turmeric could potentially be used as a drug in the treatment of neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's disease, according to a study from the Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine in Julich, Germany.

The bioactive compound, aromatic turmerone, found in the yellow spice commonly used to make curry powder, has been shown in previous studies to block activation of microglial cells, which when activated cause neuroinflammation, which is linked to certain neurological disorders.
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The team of investigators sought to analyze the impact of aromatic turmerone on the brain's self-repairing ability, which they note was previously unknown.

For the study, the researchers focused on endogenous neural stem cells, which are found in adult brains and differentiate into neurons, which play a vital role in the self-repair of brain function in diseases such as Alzheimer's. The team tested aromatic turmerone's effects on neural stem cells in live adult rats by injecting them with the cells.

After using PET imaging and a tracer to find proliferating cells, the investigators found that the subventricular zone (SVZ) in the rats was wider, and the hippocampus expanded in the brains of the rats that had been injected with the compound, in comparison to those that did not receive the compound.

In addition, the researchers cultured and grew rat fetal neural stem cells in 6 different concentrations of the compound for 72 hours, finding that, in certain concentrations, the compound increased neural stem cell proliferation by up to 80% without impacting cell death. The cell differentiation process also sped up in the cells treated with the compound, compared to the untreated control cells.

The findings, which the authors note are “very preliminary,” indeed promoted the multiplication of neural stem cells grown in culture “as well as their choice to turn into neurons,” according to Maria Adele Rueger, MD, research group leader in the Neural Stem Cell Laboratory, department of neurology at the University Hospital of Cologne, and co-author of the study.

“This research still has a long way to go before a clinical application,” cautions Rueger. “It needs to first be explored whether eating turmeric would influence the stem cells in the same way as injecting it into the brain, and—most importantly—whether it will have the same effect in humans at all.”

The PET imaging and the tracer used on the rats in this study “may be helpful to answer those questions,” she adds, “because it could be translated into the clinic in the future, and [could] be potentially useful in clinical studies.”

—Mark McGraw

Reference

Hucklenbroich J, Klein R, et al. Aromatic-turmerone induces neural stem cell proliferation in vitro and in vivo. Stem Cell Research & Therapy. 2014.