Antioxidants Lycopene Protects the Neurons Integrity Against Cognitive Deficits

Memory deficit is a condition that affects memory contributing to a significant impact on daily functioning.

Memory is an accumulated experience that binds together thoughts and impressions in your life from childhood to adulthood.

The most common disease associated with memory loss besides trauma is dementia, a class of neurodegenerative disease that has been found to process the gradual loss of memory in the elderly due to the death of specific neurons.

Memory deficits can be acute. Short-term memory is a process that allows you to remember things temporarily, such as reading a book, going to shopping with a list in your mind.

Loss of short-term memory can be devastating. People with this condition can not remember the content in a task that they try to discuss with others

In other words, people with a weak working memory can’t remember what they wanted to say.

In chronic memory deficits or long-term memory loss, patients have trouble recalling information when they are needed. Aging has been found to be one of the major risk factors which weaken long-and short term memory.

Chronic memory loss caused by psychological conditions such as stress, nutrients deficiency, depression, and medication can be reversible. However, loss of neurons in the brain is one of the irreversible chronic memory deficits found in a large population in the elderly, such as patients with Alzheimer’s disease.

Memory impairment is a condition associated with a slow decline in memory, thinking and reasoning skills. Over time, the condition can worsen enough to affect the quality of life and daily activity.

Some memory changes can be resolved on their own or cured by medical treatment. Others due to the loss of neuron and quantity capacity cannot be revered such as dementia.

According to statistics, every year over 7.7 million new cases are diagnosed. The disease is a leading cause of dependency and mental impairment among the elderly population.

Conventionally, there is no cure for dementia, treatment of irreversible memory impairment is focusing to improve the quality of life by delaying the progression of underlying diseases such as AD and PD.

Lycopene is a phytochemical in the class of carotenoid, a natural pigment with no vitamin A activity found abundantly in tomatoes and other red fruits and vegetables, such as red carrots, watermelons, and papayas,

Tomatoes provide about 80% of the lycopene in the world diet. In plants, lycopene protects the host against excessive photodamage and performs various functions in photosynthesis.

On finding a natural compound for the treatment of oxidative stress effects in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD), researchers examined whether lycopene or lycopene/vitamin E could exert protective effects on memory deficit and oxidative stress in tau transgenic mice expressing P301L mutation.

The experiment included P301L transgenic mice randomly assigned to three groups: P301L group (P301L), P301L+lycopene (Lyc), and P301L+lycopene/vitamin E (Lyc+VE) with age-matched C57BL/6J mice as wild type controls (Con).

The P301L group showed a significant spatial and passive memory impairments observed by elevated oxidative stress markers of malondialdehyde (MDA) levels and decreased levels of antioxidant enzymes produced by the host compared to control.

According to neuro analysis, the P301L group also exhibited an increase of tau phosphorylation at Thr231/Ser235, Ser262, and Ser396 in the brain.

Supplementations of lycopene or lycopene/vitamin E administration significantly ameliorate the memory deficits, by decreasing the levels of MDA concentrations and increasing the production of the GSH-Px activities.

Markedly, the lycopene or lycopene/vitamin E treatment groups also attenuated tau hyperphosphorylation at multiple AD-related sites.

These findings strongly suggested that lycopene or lycopene/vitamin E protect the integrity of the neurons against the increase of tau phosphorylation associated with neuronal cell dysfunction caused by oxidative stress through their antioxidant activity.

Based on the results, researchers wrote, " the combination of lycopene and vitamin E antioxidants acted in a synergistic fashion to bring significant effects against oxidative stress in tauopathies".

Taken altogether, lycopene found in tomato used alone or combined with vitamin E may be considered supplements for the prevention and treatment of cognitive deficits, pending on the confirmation of the larger sample size and multicenter human study.

Intake of lycopene in the form of supplements should be taken with extreme care to prevent overdose acute liver toxicity.

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Author Biography
Kyle J. Norton (Scholar, Master of Nutrition, All right reserved)
Health article writer and researcher; Over 10.000 articles and research papers have been written and published online, including worldwide health, ezine articles, article base, health blogs, self-growth, best before it's news, the karate GB daily, etc.,.
Named TOP 50 MEDICAL ESSAYS FOR ARTISTS & AUTHORS TO READ by Disilgold.com Named 50 of the best health Tweeters Canada - Huffington Post
Nominated for shorty award over last 4 years
Some articles have been used as references in medical research, such as international journal Pharma and Bioscience, ISSN 0975-6299.

Sources
(1) Dietary Lycopene Supplementation Improves Cognitive Performances in Tau Transgenic Mice Expressing P301L Mutation via Inhibiting Oxidative Stress and Tau Hyperphosphorylation by Yu L, Wang W, Pang W, Xiao Z, Jiang Y, Hong Y. (PubMed)
(2) Supplementation of lycopene attenuates oxidative stress induced neuroinflammation and cognitive impairment via Nrf2/NF-κB transcriptional pathway by Zhao B1, Ren B1, Guo R1, Zhang W1, Ma S1, Yao Y1, Yuan T1, Liu Z1, Liu X. (PubMed)