From Healthy Aging
Maintaining Cognitive Health
By Chris D. Meletis, ND
To achieve optimal brain function, one must take cognitive enhancement a step beyond protecting neurons. It’s equally important to ensure proper functioning of astrocytes and microglia. One substance shown to control over-activation of microglia is vinpocetine. As mentioned previously, the excessive activation of microglia is associated with the development of inflammation that may lead to neurodegenerative diseases. In an experimental animal model of dementia, researchers induced neurodegenerative lesions in rats then administered vinpocetine intraperitoneally. The rats not given vinpocetine did poorly on behavioral tests, including impaired recognition of novel objects and a new social partner plus suppressed spatial learning performance in the Morris water maze. In rats given vinpocetine, the behavioral deficits were attenuated. Lesion-induced attention deficit and learning disabilities were markedly alleviated by vinpocetine. The researchers also studied brain changes in the animals and determined that vinpocetine significantly decreased lesion size and microglia activation.
Vinpocetine also has been shown to protect astrocytes against hypoxic (low oxygen) injury in vitro. Administration of vinpocetine to cell cultures of astrocytes during hypoxia significantly decreased the number of dead cells. Vinpocetine also stimulated mitochondrial function and increased levels of intracellular ATP, the universal energy molecule. The researchers concluded that vinpocetine had a significant cell-protective effect on astrocytes in vitro.
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