By Jimmy Downs

Saturday Dec 1, 2012 (foodconsumer.org) -- A study scheduled to be published in Jan, 2012 in Behavioral Brain and Research suggests that taking a green tea compound supplement or drinking green tea may help prevent or even reverse Alzheimer's disease.

Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of dementia, has no cure and it eventually disables the patients and causes death.  The disease mostly affects men and women aged 65 years or older.

R. Biasibetti at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul Ramiro Barcelos in Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil and colleagues conducted the study and found supplementation with green tea epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) for weeks improved cognitive deficit in rats suffering a disease similar to Alzheimer's disease.

Previous studies showed EGCG has beneficial effects on cognition and memory, according to researchers. 

In the current study, rats received one of the four treatments including placebo, intracerebroventricular (ICV) infusion of streptozotocin (STZ), placebo with EGCG and  streptozotocin with EGCG for four weeks.

The researchers found "EGCG was not able to modify glucose uptake and glutathione content, although cognitive deficit, S100B content and secretion, AChE activity, glutathione peroxidase activity, NO metabolites, and reactive oxygen species content were completely reversed by EGCG administration, confirming the neuroprotective potential of this compound."

They concluded "These findings contribute to the understanding of diseases accompanied by cognitive deficits and the STZ-model of dementia."

It is not clear whether EGCG supplementation or drinking green tea could cure Alzheimer's disease in humans, but it is certain that this green tea compound can help protect against cognition among other things.