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Green tea
may protect brain cells against Parkinson's
disease
Philadelphia,
PA, December 13, 2007 – Does the consumption
of green tea, widely touted to have
beneficial effects on health, also protect
brain cells? Authors of a new study being
published in the December 15th issue of
Biological Psychiatry share new data that
indicates this may be the case.
The authors
investigated the effects of green tea
polyphenols, a group of naturally occurring
chemical substances found in plants that
have antioxidant properties, in an animal
model of Parkinson’s disease.
Parkinson’s disease is
a progressive, degenerative disorder of the
central nervous system, resulting from the
loss of dopamine-producing brain cells, and
there is presently no cure. According to Dr.
Baolu Zhao, corresponding and senior author
on this article, current treatments for
Parkinson’s are associated with serious and
important side effects.
Their previous research
has indicated that green tea possesses
neuroprotective effects, leading Guo and
colleagues to examine its effects
specifically in Parkinson’s. The authors
discovered that green tea polyphenols
protect dopamine neurons that increases with
the amount consumed.
They also show that
this protective effect is mediated by
inhibition of the ROS-NO pathway, a pathway
that may contribute to cell death in
Parkinson’s.
Considering the
popularity of green tea beverages worldwide,
there is enormous public interest in the
health effects of its consumption. John H.
Krystal, M.D., Editor of Biological
Psychiatry and affiliated with both Yale
University School of Medicine and the VA
Connecticut Healthcare System, reminds us
that “many health-related claims have been
made for a wide variety of
naturally-occurring substances and many of
these claims, as in the case of St. John’s
Wort and Ginko Biloba, have not held up in
rigorous clinical studies.
Thus, it is extremely
important to identify the putative
neuroprotective mechanisms in animal models,
as Guo and colleagues have begun to do for
Parkinson’s disease.”
Dr. Zhao’s hope is that
eventually “green tea polyphenols may be
developed into a safe and easily
administrable drug for Parkinson’s disease.”
Dr. Krystal agrees, that “if green tea
consumption can be shown to have meaningful
neuroprotective actions in patients, this
would be an extremely important advance.”
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