Bacopa monnieri supplementation has no effect on serum brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) levels but beneficially modulates NF-kB and CREB levels in healthy elderly subjects
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background and Aim: Bacopa monnieri is an Ayurvedic herb that has been used for multiple conditions, most notably to augment cognition, particularly memory and attention.Multiple mechanisms, including raising brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), have been proposed and investigated in animal models that require translational studies in humans.Methods: Bacopa was administered in an open-labeled study to cognitively healthy controls over a 3-month period.Cognition and mood were assessed using the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) and geriatric depression scale (GDS) at the baseline and 3-month visit.Laboratories were assessed for safety and serum levels of mature (mBDNF) and proBDNF were quantified.In a subset of subjects, intracellular signaling processes were assessed using western blot analysis.Results: Bacopa was provided to 35 subjects and was well-tolerated except for 4 (11%) subjects who early terminated due to known, reversible, and gastrointestinal side effects (i.e., nausea, diarrhea).Over the 3 months, the GDS and the total MoCA did not significantly change; however, the delayedrecall subscale significantly improved (baseline: 3.8 ± 1.2, 3-months: 4.3 ± 0.9; P = 0.032).Serum mBDNF and proBDNF levels did not significantly change.Cyclic AMP response element-binding protein (CREB) phosphorylation significantly increased (P = 0.028) and p65 nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB) phosphorylation significantly decreased (P = 0.030). Conclusion:These results suggest that Bacopa may exert an anti-inflammatory effect through NF-κB and improve intracellular signaling processes associated with synaptogenesis (CREB).The future placebo-controlled studies are recommended.Relevance for Patients: B. monnieri will require larger, blinded trials to better understand potential mechanisms, interactions, and utilization.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".