Helping Down’s Syndrome with Green Tea

We love finding studies that offer some help for conditions for which little help is held out. That’s why we were excited to find this study of Down’s syndrome. This hot off the presses study of Down’s syndrome and green tea was published just yesterday. . . .

Down syndrome is a genetic disorder caused when abnormal cell division results in extra genetic material from chromosome 21. Down’s syndrome causes lifelong intellectual disability and developmental delays.

Early cognitive intervention is the only therapy used to help the intellectual deficits of people with Down’s syndrome. But it doesn’t work very well. Researchers wanted to see if adding green tea extract would improve the results.

The double-blind study included 84 adults with Down’s syndrome. They ranged in age from 16 to 34. Everyone in the study underwent a year of cognitive training, but while 41 of them received a placebo, 43 received a green tea extract containing with EGCG. EGCG, or epigallocatechin-3-gallate is an active flavonoid found in green tea. The dose of EGCG was 9mg/kg a day.

Adding the green tea did not benefit all of the scores measured, but it did benefit some. People who got the green tea extract had significantly higher scores in visual recognition memory, inhibitory control and adaptive behaviour.

The green tea extract was not only effective, but safe.

Interestingly, this is at least the second study to find that green tea can help Down’s syndrome. An earlier double-blind study gave a similar dose of EGCG to adults with Down’s syndrome for three months. The EGCG supplementation significantly cognitive deficits by improving memory recognition and working memory. It also improved quality of life (Mol Nutr Food Res 2014;58:278–88)

Lancet Neurology 2016;15:801-810

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