That's what a group of researchers seem to believe.  This article is
brought
to you via a friend of mine who subscribes to Science News Online.  I
was
going to subscribe, but the $54 price for a year stopped me cold.  So,
not
being able to point to a link, I'm posting the entire article.  I think
you
may find it interesting.

Barbara

Science News Online

Week of Sept. 15, 2007; Vol. 172, No. 11

Curry Powder
An age-old seasoning could help combat Alzheimer's

Patrick Barry

 Imagine that you're living 3,000 years ago in a village in what's now
southern India.  When you get sick or injured, you visit the healer, who
most likely is a practitioner of the herbal medicine called ayurveda.  
For
whatever ails you, you'll probably get a treatment that includes a bit
of
bright, yellow-orange powder, the spice turmeric.

 If you have a scrape, the healer will put turmeric on it. Indigestion?
Turmeric.  Jaundice? Turmeric.  "Nervous weakness"? That's right,
turmeric.

 The powder comes from a broad-leafed plant that thrives in the hot,
rainy
climates of southern Asia.  Its pinecone-shaped stalks of white, pink,
and
yellow flowers smell faintly of mango, and its bulbous roots resemble
those
of the ginger plant, to which it is closely related.  Cut a root open,
however, and you'll find its fleshy interior is that vivid yellow-orange.

 ANCIENT MEDICINE. The flowering turmeric plant grows in the tropics of
southern Asia.  People of the region have used powdered turmeric root in
both food and medicine for millennia.  Corbis

 People in the region long ago discovered that boiling, drying, and
grinding these roots produces a fragrant powder with a nutty, slightly
bitter taste.  People ascribed healing properties to the powder,
particularly for ailments involving inflammation.  Meanwhile, the
substance
became pervasive in regional diets as the color-giving component of most
yellow curries.  The widespread use of turmeric continues today in both
Indian cuisine and in ayurvedic medicine.

 Western medical doctors are often skeptical about traditional and
herbal
cures.  In the case of turmeric, however, a surge of scientific research
in
recent years has supported at least some of the claims made for
turmeric's
active ingredient, a compound called curcumin.  This research has shown
that
curcumin  available commercially as an extract  acts as both a powerful
antioxidant and an anti-inflammatory agent.

 It was this anti-inflammatory property that led University of
California,
Los Angeles, researchers Greg Cole and Sally Frautschy to wonder in the
mid-1990s whether curcumin might be effective against a condition that
ayurvedic practitioners might not have considered:  Alzheimer's disease.

 An estimated 24 million people worldwide have Alzheimer's.  The U.S.
Food
and Drug Administration has approved five drugs to mitigate its
symptoms,
but no FDA-approved drug exists to combat the causes of the disease.

 Alzheimer's disease involves the steady deterioration of nerve cells
in
the brain, leading to dementia.  A leading theory holds that the disease
arises when a small protein in the brain gathers into toxic clumps
called
plaques.  In this scenario, these plaques kill brain cells in part by
triggering inflammation, a state of heightened immune system activity
that
can damage the body's own cells.  The plaques also produce free
radicals,
which cause oxidative damage to nerve cells.

 "We looked at [curcumin] and said, 'You know, here's something which
is
anti-inflammatory,'" says Cole. "When we saw that curcumin was also a
better
antioxidant than even vitamin E, we said, 'This thing has got all these
properties that look good, so we'll test it,'" against Alzheimer's.

 Those experiments and subsequent work by other scientists have shown
that,
in addition to its anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties,
curcumin
has several effects that may work in tandem to protect the brain from
plaques in other ways.  "If curcumin had a single [molecular] target, it
probably would not be as good a drug," says Bharat Aggarwal, who studies
curcumin at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.  "But because it
has
multiple targets, [it's] very attractive."

 Counting the ways

 In the late 1990s, Cole's team screened curcumin and 11 other
candidate
compounds that have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties.  The
scientists tested the substances in mice that had an Alzheimer's-like
condition created by infusing the plaque-forming protein, called
amyloid-beta, into the mice's brains.  The results were surprising, Cole
says.  "Amyloid-beta was reduced by the curcumin but not by these other
[compounds]."  Compared with mice that were fed normal diets, the
animals
treated with curcumin had up to 80 percent fewer plaques.

 The reasons for this decrease in amyloid-beta plaques began to emerge
in
2002, when Cole's team showed that, in lab dishes, curcumin inhibits
amyloid-beta proteins from clumping into plaques.  Two years later, a
team
of researchers in Japan led by Kenjiro Ono of the Kanazawa University
Graduate School of Medical Science found that curcumin not only blocks
plaque formation but also weakens existing plaques in the lab and
triggers
their disintegration.  Ono's group didn't figure out the physical
mechanism
by which curcumin disrupted the plaques, however.

 A clue to that mechanism came from an unexpected source.  It turned
out
that curcumin resembles molecules that scientists had been using in
medical
imaging to make plaques more visible in brain scans.  Because of that
structural similarity, curcumin also has a strong affinity for binding
to
amyloid-beta.

 Using mice engineered to have a mutated human gene known to cause
plaque,
Cole's group showed in 2005 that curcumin's direct binding to the
amyloid-beta protein accounts for the chemical's ability to interfere
with
plaque formation and to degrade existing plaques.

 Ingesting curcumin can also lower a person's cholesterol.  In a study
by
researchers at the Amala Cancer Hospital and Research Center in
Amalanagar,
India, people who took 500 milligrams of curcumin daily for 7 days had a
29
percent higher concentration of beneficial high-density lipoprotein
cholesterol than they'd initially had, and their total blood-cholesterol
concentration was an encouraging 11 percent lower.

 Several studies during the 1990s found that people with unhealthy
cholesterol profiles had a greater risk of developing Alzheimer's
disease
than did people with normal cholesterol readings.  A team led by Takashi
Mori of the Saitama Medical University in Japan found in 2001 that
cholesterol accumulates within plaques and may help amyloid-beta
proteins
bundle together, suggesting that reducing cholesterol might also inhibit
plaque formation in the brain.

 More recently, some scientists have suggested that a person's immune
system may also be involved in Alzheimer's.  "Everybody is always
producing
amyloid-beta, but not everybody is developing the disease," says Milan
Fiala
of the Greater Los Angeles Veterans' Affairs Medical Center.  The
reason, he
argues, is that immune system cells called macrophages normally patrol
the
brain and gobble up budding plaques.  Fiala suspects that, in people who
develop Alzheimer's, these macrophages aren't performing their cleanup
duty
properly.

 That's just what he found when he tested macrophages taken from
Alzheimer's patients.  When placed in lab dishes with amyloid-beta
plaques,
these cells had almost no ability to devour the plaques, largely because
of
reduced activity of a gene called MGAT3.  Adding curcumin to the dish
restored the plaque-clearing prowess of about half of these macrophages
and
returned MGAT3 to its normal activity, Fiala and his colleagues report
in
the July 31 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (SN:
7/21/07, p.
37).

 "The list of [curcumin's] effects goes on and on, and they're all in
your
favor," Aggarwal says.

 Down to the roots

 If curcumin really does fight the plaques that lead to Alzheimer's,
shouldn't populations in which people eat a lot of turmeric-containing
curry
have a lower incidence of the disease?

 BRIGHT FUTURE? The yellow-orange color of turmeric powder and the root
from which it's made comes from the pigment curcumin.  Several recent
studies have suggested that curcumin could be a cheap preventative and
palliative treatment for Alzheimer's disease. Corbis

 In fact, studies in India seem to show a much lower rate of
Alzheimer's
disease than exists in Western, industrialized countries.  For example,
a
2001 comparison of sample populations of people 65 and older in
Ballabgarh,
India, and in Monongahela Valley, Pa., found that only 4.7 cases of
probable
Alzheimer's disease were diagnosed per year among every 1,000 people in
India, while the comparable rate in the Pennsylvania sample was 17.5
casesalmost four times as high.  The researchers, led by Vijay Chandra
of
the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, wrote
that,
"These are the first [Alzheimer's disease] incidence rates to be
reported
from the Indian subcontinent, and they appear to be among the lowest
ever
reported."

 Of course, a curry-consuming tradition is not the only difference
between
India and other countries.  Some other physical or cultural trait, such
as
genetic differences or a relatively short life expectancy there, could
account for India's low rate of Alzheimer's disease.

 Some evidence suggests that a diet rich in yellow curry may indeed
play a
role.  In 2003, Tze-Pin Ng of the National University of Singapore and
his
colleagues tested the mental performance of 1,010 Singaporeans between
the
ages of 60 and 93, none of whom had been diagnosed with any form of
dementia.  The researchers also surveyed the volunteers about their
eating
habits and found that those who reported that they ate curry
"occasionally"
or "often or very often" gave significantly better cognitive
performances
than did people who claimed to eat curry only rarely, Ng's team reported
in
the Nov. 1, 2006 American Journal of Epidemiology (SN: 11/11/06, p.
316).
The researchers noted that the curry typically used in Singapore is
yellow
curry, which is rich in curcumin-containing turmeric, rather than green
or
red curry.

 Such studies of dementia in curry-consuming cultures are not
conclusive,
scientists agree, but some researchers believe that these data suggest
that
a link may exist between frequent consumption of yellow curry and
reduced
risk of mental decline from Alzheimer's.

 Cupboard cure?

 If it does prove effective against the disease, curcumin would have an
important advantage over other Alzheimer's treatments under development.
People can get it at the grocery store, in turmeric powder shelved in
the
spice aisle.
 The fact that turmeric root is already sold all over the world was one
of
the reasons for researchers' original interest.  "If we're going to have
a
treatment which has worldwide impact, it would need to be cheap," says
Jeffrey Cummings of the University of California, Los Angeles.  "So the
economics of curcumin are very fortuitous in that it is a cheap, widely
available compound."

 However, Cummings and others caution that the ready availability of
curcumin is also one of its dangers.  In the United States, the 1994
Dietary
Supplement Health and Education Act allows companies to sell
dietary-supplement pills containing concentrated plant extracts such as
curcumin without approval from the FDA.  The quality of such pills is
essentially unregulatedeach company is responsible for ensuring that its
pills' ingredients are safe and that they contain what the company
claims
them to be.  Although bills pending in Congress would increase FDA
oversight
of the supplement industry, it's currently a buyer-beware market.

 Fortunately, millennia of use in food, as well as recent scientific
tests,
have left curcumin with an excellent safety record.  Neither history nor
recent research has turned up adverse health effects in people consuming
reasonable amounts of curcumin, Aggarwal says.

 The final word on whether curcumin actually helps prevent and treat
Alzheimer's disease can come only from the gold standard of medical
research:  a placebo-controlled trial on people.  Such data for curcumin
are
not yet available, but University of California, Los Angeles neurologist
John Ringman is conducting a trial of curcumin in about 40 Alzheimer's
patients.  The trial is in its final stages, and the researchers expect
to
have their results prepared for publication by early next year.

 In the meantime, if you want to remember to check back later on
Ringman's
study, it certainly couldn't hurt to add some yellow curry to your diet.

 If you have a comment on this article that you would like considered
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 References:

 Atamna, H., and K. Boyle. 2006. Amyloid-b peptide binds with heme to
form
a peroxidase: Relationship to the cytopathologies of Alzheimer's
disease.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103(Feb. 28):3381-3386.
Available at http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/103/9/3381.

 Chandra, V., et al. 2001. Incidence of Alzheimer's disease in a rural
community in India: The IndoUS study. Neurology 57(Sept. 25):985-989.
Abstract available at
http://www.neurology.org/cgi/content/abstract/57/6/985?ck=nck.

 ______. 1998. Prevalence of Alzheimer's disease and other dementias in
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available at http://www.neurology.org/cgi/content/abstract/51/4/1000.

 Fiala, M., et al. 2007. Innate immunity and transcriptional
down-regulation of MGAT-III and toll-like receptors in Alzheimer's
disease
patients are improved by bisdemethoxycurcumin. Proceedings of the
National
Academy of Sciences 104(July 31):12849-12854. Abstract available at
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/104/31/12849.

 Kim, D.S.H.L., S.-Y. Park, and J.-Y. Kim. 2001. Curcuminoids from
Curcuma
longa L. (Zingiberaceae) that protect PC12 rat pheochromocytoma and
normal
human umbilical vein endothelial cells from b-A(1-42) insult.
Neuroscience
Letters 303(April 27):57-61. Abstract available at
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0304-3940(01)01677-9.

 Lim, G.P.... S.A. Frautschy, and G.M. Cole. 2001. The curry spice
curcumin
reduces oxidative damage and amyloid pathology in an Alzheimer
transgenic
mouse. Journal of Neuroscience 21(Nov. 1):8370-8377. Available at
http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/full/21/21/8370.

 Ng, T.P., et al. 2006. Curry consumption and cognitive function in the
elderly. American Journal of Epidemiology 164(Nov. 1):898-906. Abstract
available at
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/164/9/898.

 Razdan, S., et al. 1994. Prevalence and pattern of major neurological
disorders in rural Kashmir (India) in 1986. Neuroepidemiology 13:113-119.

 Ryu, E.K., et al. 2006. Curcumin and dehydrozingerone derivatives:
Synthesis, radiolabeling, and evaluation for b-amyloid plaque imaging.
Journal of Medicinal Chemistry 49(Oct. 5):6111-6119. Abstract available
at
http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi/
jmcmar/2006/49/i20/abs/jm0607193.html.

 Shaji, S., et al. 2005. Prevalence of dementia in an urban population
in
Kerala, India. British Journal of Psychiatry 186(February):136-140.
Available at http://bjp.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/full/186/2/136.

 Yang, F., et al. 2005. Curcumin inhibits formation of amyloid b
oligomers
and fibrils, binds plaques, and reduces amyloid in vivo. Journal of
Biological Chemistry 280(Feb. 18):5892-5901. Available at
http://www.jbc.org/cgi/content/full/280/7/5892.

 Further Readings:

 Barry, P. 2007. Brain seasoning: A common spice could deter
Alzheimer's.
Science News 172(July 21):37. Available to subscribers at
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20070721/fob6.asp.

 Harder, B. 2006. Curry may counter cognitive decline. Science News
170(Nov. 11):316. Available to subscribers at
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20061111/note11.asp.

 Seppa, N. 2002. Spice component versus cancer cells. Science News
161(May
18):317. Available to subscribers at
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20020518/note13.asp.

 Travis, J. 2001. A spice takes on Alzheimer's disease. Science News
160(Dec. 8):362. Available to subscribers at
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20011208/note12.asp.

 Sources:

 Bharat B. Aggarwal M.D. Anderson Cancer Center 1515 Holcombe Boulevard
P.O. Box 0143 Houston, TX 77030

 Gregory M. Cole University of California, Los Angeles Med-SFV, GRECC
P.O.
Box 951692 Sep. VAMC (11E) Los Angeles, CA 90095-1692

 Jeffrey L. Cummings Department of Neurology University of California,
Los
Angeles 10911 Weyburn Avenue, 2nd Floor Los Angeles, CA 90095

 Milan Fiala University of California, Los Angeles Med-VA Greater LA
Healthcare System P.O. Box 951668 63-090 CHS Los Angeles, CA 90095-1668

 http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20070915/bob8.asp

 From Science News, Vol. 172, No. 11, Sept. 15, 2007, p. 167.

 Copyright (c) 2007 Science Service. All rights reserved.

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