Clients in the News: UC Santa Barbara Scientists Discover Cinnamon Compounds Prevent Alzheimer’s

Cinnamon: Can the red-brown spice with the unmistakable fragrance and variety of uses offer an important benefit? The common baking spice might hold the key to delaying the onset of –– or warding off –– the effects of Alzheimer’s disease.
That is, according to Roshni George and Donald Graves, scientists at UC Santa Barbara. The results of their study, “Interaction of Cinnamaldehyde and Epicatechin with Tau: Implications of Beneficial Effects in Modulating Alzheimer’s Disease Pathogenesis,” appears in the online early edition of the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, and in the upcoming Volume 36, issue 1 print edition.

Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia, a neurodegenerative disease that progressively worsens over time as it kills brain cells. No cure has yet been found, nor has the major cause of Alzheimer’s been identified.

However, two compounds found in cinnamon –– cinnamaldehyde and epicatechin –– are showing some promise in the effort to fight the disease. According to George and Graves, the compounds have been shown to prevent the development of the filamentous “tangles” found in the brain cells that characterize Alzheimer’s.

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