14 DAY TRIAL // A team of neuroscientists of the University of South Florida have found that nutritional supplementation with a blue-green algae called Spirulina, very rich in nutrients, could give neuroprotective support to dying motor neurons, in a mouse model of ALS – amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.
Svitlana Garbuzova-Davis, PhD, DSc, assistant professor in the Department of Neurosurgery and Brain Repair at USF and the study's lead author explained that “ALS is a degenerative motor neuron disease, and most available treatments relieve symptoms without altering the underlying disease.
“However, evidence for oxidative stress has been associated with ALS and, in our past studies, we demonstrated potent decreases in markers of oxidative damage and inflammation in aged rats fed diets supplemented with spirulina or spinach.
“In this initial study, the diet supplement was fed only to pre-symptomatic mice.
“Further studies showing the diet supplement's effect on the lifespan of symptomatic ALS mice are needed to prove the treatment's effectiveness.”
Spirulina is an ancient food source used by the Aztecs, and this small blue-green algae could have a dual antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effect on motor neurons,according to the researchers.
In their study they compared ALS mice that received a spirulina-supplemented diet over a period of ten weeks, with mice that did not receive the diet supplementation, and concluded that the spirulina-fed ALS mice presented reduced inflammatory markers and motor neuron degeneration over the study period.
The researchers are aware that more research is needed, still they suggest that a spirulina-supplemented diet could offer clinical benefits to ALS patients.
USF researchers also tested the compounds found in blueberries and spirulina for possible beneficial effects in animal models of stroke and aging, and found that both worked well as nutritional supplements.
Study co-author Paula C. Bickford, PhD, a professor in the USF Department of Neurosurgery and Brain Repair and a senior research biologist at the James A. Haley Veterans' Hospital in Tampa, Florida, said that “the focus of our future ALS experiments will include motor neuron counts and an examination of lifespan following dietary spirulina supplementation in symptomatic ALS mice.”
This study is published in the current issue of The Open Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine Journal.