STUDY: Ginkgo Biloba, statins fail to help in MS

[ActiveMSers]

Disappointing. It's interesting that über popular Ginkgo Biloba had no effect on short term cognition (long term wasn't studied) and that those taking statins may actually increase their relapse rate. I suppose this news may save some of us some money. - Dave

HONOLULU – Ginkgo biloba and simvastatin were not helpful in patients with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis in separate randomized, placebo-controlled trials.

Treatment with ginkgo at 120 mg twice a day for 12 weeks produced no significant, short-term improvements in cognitive function in a study of 121 patients. The addition of simvastatin (Zocor) to interferon therapy for multiple sclerosis in a separate study did not significantly reduce the annualized relapse rate after 1-3 years, investigators reported at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology.

[ActiveMSers]

Here's an abstract of the full study, which was officially published this month....

Source: Neurology

Ginkgo biloba does not improve cognitive function in MS: A randomized placebo-controlled trial

Lovera JF, Kim E, Heriza E, Fitzpatrick M, Hunziker J, Turner AP, Adams J, Stover T, Sangeorzan A, Sloan A, Howieson D, Wild K, Haselkorn J, Bourdette D; Neurology (Sep 2012)

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether Ginkgo biloba extract (ginkgo) improves cognitive function in persons with multiple sclerosis (MS).

METHODS: Persons with MS from the Seattle and Portland VA clinics and adjacent communities who scored 1 SD or more below the mean on one of 4 neuropsychological tests (Stroop Test, California Verbal Learning Test II [CVLT-II], Controlled Oral Word Association Test [COWAT], and Paced Auditory Serial Addition Task [PASAT]) were randomly assigned to receive either one 120-mg tablet of ginkgo (EGb-761; Willmar Schwabe GmbH&Co, Germany) or one placebo tablet twice a day for 12 weeks. As the primary outcome, we compared the performance of the 2 groups on the 4 tests at exit after adjusting for baseline performance.

RESULTS: Fifty-nine subjects received placebo and 61 received ginkgo; 1 participant receiving placebo and 3 receiving ginkgo were lost to follow-up. Two serious adverse events (AEs) (myocardial infarction and severe depression) believed to be unrelated to the treatment occurred in the ginkgo group; otherwise, there were no significant differences in AEs. The differences (ginkgo - placebo) at exit in the z scores for the cognitive tests were as follows: PASAT -0.2 (95% confidence interval [CI] -0.5 to 0.1); Stroop Test -0.5 (95% CI -0.9 to -0.1); COWAT 0.0 (95% CI -0.2 to 0.3); and CVLT-II 0.0 (95% CI -0.3 to 0.3); none was statistically significant.

CONCLUSIONS: Treatment with ginkgo 120 mg twice a day did not improve cognitive performance in persons with MS.Classification of evidence:This study provides Class I evidence that treatment with ginkgo 120 mg twice a day for 12 weeks does not improve cognitive performance in people with MS.

[sulgrifjewls]

Dave,
I think you need to get outside more and stop reading weird stuff.
Just my humble opinion.
Jill

[ActiveMSers]

Ha, thanks Jill. I get so many abstracts e-mailed to me that I would really need to get out more if I read them all in detail and tried to comprehend each one.

For this particular study, the earlier article link had died, so I figured I'd post the study abstract if people wanted to research it in more detail.