Alzheimer’s probiotics trial shows improved cognition

A recent small clinical trial showed improved cognition in Alzheimer’s patients who were given probiotics.

Researchers from Kashan University of Medical Sciences and Islamic Azad University completed a small, randomised, double-blind, controlled clinical trial on 52 women and men with Alzheimer’s between 60 and 95 years of age.

Half of the patients received 200 ml milk daily enriched with four probiotic bacteria, while the other half received untreated milk.

Over the course of the small study, the average score on the cognitive impairment questionnaire significantly increased in the group receiving probiotics.

The clinical trial is published in the Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience online journal.

Walter Lukiw, Professor of Neurology, Neuroscience and Ophthalmology and Bollinger Professor of Alzheimer’s disease at Louisiana State University, who reviewed the study but was not involved in the research, says in the journal blog, “This early study is interesting and important because it provides evidence for gastrointestinal tract microbiome components playing a role in neurological function, and indicates that probiotics can, in principle, improve human cognition”.

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