Should we forget about Ginkgo biloba?

William Atkins
Saturday, 10 January 2009 19:47

Science - Health

A new eight-year U.S. study adds further medical evidence that Ginkgo biloba does not prevent Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia.


University of Virginia (Charlottesville) School of Medicine neurologist Steven DeKosky, who is one of the authors of the study, stated “This is tremendously disappointing.” [Science News (12-20-08, page 8) “Ginkgo biloba fails drug test”]

The medical paper by the U.S. researchers is entitled “Ginkgo biloba for Prevention of Dementia: A Randomized Controlled Trial.”

It was published in the November 19, 2008 issue (2008, 300(19): 2253-2262) of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

Their research was performed because the authors felt that clinical trials to test the effectiveness of Ginkgo biloba were insufficient with regards to the prevention of Alzheimer’s disease.

G. biloba is currently used by dementia patients as a possible way to reduce memory and cognition loss.

The researchers tested G. biloba and a placebo as to whether or not Ginkgo biloba reduces the incidences of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease in elderly patients with “normal cognition and those with mild cognitive impairment (MCI).”

Three thousand sixty-nine community volunteers 75 years of age or older were used as elderly patients with either “normal cognition” (2,587 out of 3,069) or “MCI” (482 out of 3,069).

Page two describes the experiment.