Nutritional Supplement May Help Prevent Alzheimer's, University of Virginia and Northwestern University Study

A nutritional supplement available over-the-counter may offer protection from Alzheimer's disease, a study by the University of Virginia and Northwestern University suggests. Researchers at Northwestern and U.Va.'s School of Medicine set out to evaluate the effectiveness of chiro-inositol, a compound that occurs naturally in certain foods and is available as a nutritional supplement, in protecting the brain from beta amyloid toxins, which cause Alzheimer's. They conclude, in a paper published this month in The FASEB Journal, that chiro-inositol "greatly enhances" insulin's ability to prevent damage to neurons by toxic peptides called ADDLs. The damage and loss of neurons is believed responsible for Alzheimer's.