Green Tea and Down Syndrome

by Julian
(Bromley)

Drinking green tea may improve your mental capability in an unexpected way. A Spanish research study found that taking green tea extract can help improve cognitive abilities of people suffering from Down Syndrome.

"This is the first time that a treatment has shown some efficacy in the improvement of some cognitive tasks in persons with this syndrome, states Dr. Dierssen, head of the Cellular and Systems Neurobiology group at the Centre for Genomic Regulation in Spain.

"It must be made clear that our discovery is not a cure for Down's syndrome and that our results have to be proven in larger populations, but it may be a treatment to improve these individuals' quality of life," she adds.

The work just published by the researchers in The Lancet Neurology presents the results of a clinical trial led by the Integrative Pharmacology and Systems Neuroscience Research group of Dr. Rafael de la Torre with 84 persons with Down's syndrome aged 16 to 34 years.

"The results suggest that individuals who received treatment with the green tea compound, together with the cognitive stimulation protocol, had better score in their cognitive capacities," states Dr. de la Torre. However, studies in larger populations have still to be done.

"It was surprising to see how the changes are not just cognitive—in the reasoning, learning, memory and attention capacities—but suggest that the functional connectivity of the neurons in the brain was also modified" says Dr. de la Torre.

Source: http://phys.org/wire-news/226747771/clinical-trial-opens-new-avenues-for-pharmacological-therapy-in.html