Ginkgo and Alzheimer’s by Paul Bergner Medical Herbalism 7(1-2):25 For almost a decade, medical researchers have suggested hopefully that Ginkgo biloba extracts might be helpful for Alzheimer’s disease patients. Now in this 1994 clinical trial, researchers gave 80 mg of ginkgo extract or a placebo to a group of forty patients with early stage Alzheimer’s disease. Memory, attention, and other parameters of dementia improved by the end of one month in the placebo group, and continued improving for the three months of the study. This
trial raises hope for improvement
in Alzheimer’s patients, but by no means
demonstrates that ginkgo is a
“cure” for Alzheimer’s or would be effective in
later stage disease.
Patients rarely have a single disease entity
that neatly fits
diagnostic categories, and subjects could have
been suffering from both
Alzheimer’s and other pathologies. The ginkgo
could have
symptomatically improved the picture without
actually affecting the
process or the progress of the Alzheimer’s-type
pathology. The
researchers used double the normal dose of
ginkgo, and no side effects
were reported.
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