Cat's Claw

"Cat's claw" plant extract may fight Alzheimer's

WASHINGTON, Apr 16 (Reuters)
Cat's claw, a plant extract sold to boost the immune system and reduce inflammation, may work against Alzheimer's disease, researchers said on Friday. They said experiments in rats showed that the herbal supplement, which comes from a plant found in the Amazon, prevented some of the damage associated with Alzheimer's.

Specifically it prevented the deposit of beta-amyloid plaques in the rats' brains, said Alan Snow, a pathology professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. Alzheimer's is the single most common cause of dementia. It affects four million Americans, including former President Ronald Reagan.

The Alzheimer's Association predicts that 14 million Americans could be afflicted by the year 2050. There is no known cure, although some drugs may slow its progression for a short time. In Alzheimer's disease, a protein known as beta-amyloid is found in unusual deposits, known as plaques, in the brain, along with stringy tangles of brain cells. But exactly what it does is unclear. Another protein, known as tau, is also involved, but again its role is unclear. Snow and colleagues at the company he helped found, ProteoTech Inc., developed a cat's claw compound they named PTI-00703. Tests in rats and in test tubes indicate that it interferes with the formation of these plaques, they told attendees at "Experimental Biology '99," a meeting of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) in Washington.

They also mixed the compound with other extracts, including Ginkgo biloba -- which has been shown in clinical trials to delay some of the symptoms of Alzheimer's in some people -- rosemary and gotu kola. The mixture worked even better, at least in test tubes, than cat's claw alone, they said. ProteoTech said it and Boca Raton-based Rexall Sundown were hoping to start human trials of the cat's claw extract in patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's.