• Question: I was recently reading an article on alzheimers disease and turmeric, apparently turmeric has some effect on the amyloid plaques and stops them progressing- in some cases reduces them. Do you think an effective drug could be made using turmeric to combat alzheimers disease?

    Asked by danrumford to Cat, Daz, Holly, Johnson, Pamela on 17 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Cat O'Connor

      Cat O'Connor answered on 16 Jun 2011:

      Hi Dan,

      Yeah I’ve heard about this too. As far as I remember they found that Indian people had a lot less alzheimers than western world people. How cool would it be that a curry could stop you from getting Alzheimers!

      I’m pretty sure that there are researchers looking at how they can change this information, and information they’ve learned from doing experiments on animals, into a drug for humans! I found this paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2781139/ (which I think you should be able to have access to) that explains how the tumeric works…it’ll do a lot better at explaining it than I ever would!

      I really hope they are able to develop this drug as the effects that it can have on a person and their entire family is awful. But the time it takes for a drug to go from animal studies to being available to the public is anything from 10 to 20 years, sometimes even more, so I fear we may be waiting a bit longer to see if anything is developed!

      Hope this helps,

      Cat

    • Photo: Pamela Lithgow

      Pamela Lithgow answered on 17 Jun 2011:

      Well done Cat. That paper look really interesting.
      I had heard a bit about this before. As Cat said in that paper it says that there is 4.4% lower incidence of Alzheimers disease in Indian Asians. However, this can not be directly linked to tumeric so you have to be careful what conclusions you draw.
      From the other work it does look like tumeric does do something to the cells and therefore maybe useful in treating these things. But they still don’t know what it is about it that is helpful. But I think they will find out and then it could be a drug that would help treat/delay alzheimers. It is a bit like aspirin which comes from willow bark which used to be used for pain, but they found the active ingredient and now you can just have that (aspirin)
      I hope this adds to Cats answer
      Pam 🙂

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