Acute effects of flavonoid-rich blueberry on cognitive and vascular function in healthy older adults

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Consumption of flavonoids, natural compounds found in foods such as berries and cocoa, have been shown to be beneficial for cognitive function. However, less is known about potential mechanisms and acute benefits for the older population. OBJECTIVE: To determine whether acute intake of flavonoid-rich blueberry could have beneficial effects on cognitive function in a sample of healthy older adults and identify possible mechanisms. METHODS: A cross-over randomised controlled trial (RCT) was conducted (N = 18) with volunteers receiving a flavonoidrich blueberry beverage (579mg of antho-and pro-cyanidins) on one visit and a sugar-matched control on another. Cognitive function was measured at baseline, 2 and 5 hours post consumption of the intervention and blood pressure (BP), arterial stiffness and plasma brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) concentration at baseline and an hour post-intervention. RESULTS: Whilst there was no significant effect of the intervention on global cognitive function, performance was significantly different at 2 compared to 5 hours following the control beverage (p < 0.05), with a decline in performance relative to baseline at 2 hours, whereas cognitive function improved following the blueberry beverage at both post intervention time points. There was also a trend towards the blueberry beverage attenuating the increase in systolic BP evident following the control drink (p = 0.08). Finally, there was a decrease in plasma concentration of BDNF post consumption of the control drink which was attenuated following the blueberry beverage, although not significantly (p > 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: A single dose of flavonoid-rich blueberry could have a potentially protective effect on cognitive function in healthy older adults, possibly due to improved cerebrovascular function and positive interactions with cell signalling pathways involved in cognitive processes.

The Effect of Healthy Diet on Cognitive Performance Among Healthy Seniors – A Mini Review

“…The results described above indicate that healthy diet and healthy diet components generally have a positive impact on the enhancement of cognitive functions. This is in line with other studies on this research topic ( Vauzour et al, 2017 ; Calil et al, 2018 ; Kita et al, 2018 ; Mazza et al, 2018 ; Solfrizzi et al, 2018 ; Chen et al, 2019 ; Cremonini et al, 2019 ; Dodd et al, 2019 ). Furthermore, the findings reveal that healthy diet and healthy diet components might have effects on specific cognitive domains, such as memory in general ( Chai et al, 2019 ; Karstens et al, 2019 ), episodic memory ( Okubo et al, 2017 ; Marseglia et al, 2018 ; Whyte et al, 2018 ), or processing speed ( Kuroda et al, 2019 ).…”

“…The study protocols, e.g., ( Mumme et al, 2019 ), multi-domain intervention studies, e.g., ( Lehtisalo et al, 2017 ; Rosenberg et al, 2018 ), the studies with different age range of seniors, e.g., ( Kita et al, 2018 ), the studies with cognitively impaired seniors, e.g., ( Baleztena et al, 2018 ; Mazza et al, 2018 ), and cross-over randomized control study ( Dodd et al, 2019 ), the review studies, e.g., ( Vauzour et al, 2017 ; Chen et al, 2019 ; Cremonini et al, 2019 ; Soldevila-Domenech et al, 2019 ).…”

“…Therefore, there is a sustainable effort to discover alternative, effective, safe, and inexpensive strategies which could contribute to the prevention of dementia and cognitive decline and strive to improve the quality of life of aging population (Livingston et al, 2017;Vauzour et al, 2017;Cremonini et al, 2019). Evidence suggests that healthy diet or nutrition may be one of these preventive strategies (Kita et al, 2018;Mazza et al, 2018;Chen et al, 2019;Dodd et al, 2019;Karstens et al, 2019;Soldevila-Domenech et al, 2019).…”

“…Individual nutrients, such as vitamins, polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), and flavonoids play an important role in the enhancement of cognitive performance among healthy older people (Cremonini et al, 2019;Dodd et al, 2019). In addition, single foods, such as avocados (Scott et al, 2017), berries (Whyte et al, 2018), or extra-virgin olive oil (Klimova et al, 2019) are connected with the delay of cognitive decline.…”

The Effects of a Functional Food Breakfast on Gluco-Regulation, Cognitive Performance, Mood, and Satiety in Adults

“…Support from human intervention studies is limited by small samples of mostly at-risk individuals [ 23 , 24 ]. More recent studies in young healthy adults have reported improvements in memory performance following blueberry consumption, suggesting their potential even in individuals with no known risk of cognitive decline [ 25 , 26 ].…”