For years, practitioners of alternative medicine have been touting the benefits of ginkgo, especially for maintaining brain health, but a new study finds that the centuries-old nostrum does little to slow the cognitive decline of aging.
Researchers at six universities across the U.S., led by Dr. Steven DeKosky at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, report that elderly people taking ginkgo supplements showed no notable differences in scores on brain-function tests from people taking placebo pills. The team, which published its results Tuesday, Dec. 29, in the Journal of the American Medical Association, tested volunteers on a range of tasks, including memory, attention, language, and visual and spatial constructions, and found that the extract from the ancient tree did little to slow the decline of these functions
via Study: Ginkgo Does Not Slow Cognitive Decline of Aging – TIME.
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This study, when combined with some other recent studies pretty much ends any reasonable belief that Ginko is useful for either the treatment or prevention of dementia. It illustrates the importance of subjecting complementary and alternative therapies to the same standards of rigorous evaluation as traditional therapies.