Wolfberry as anti-aging to prevent and delay neurodegeneration in Alzheimer’s disease

Abstract

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a chronic neurodegenerative disease affecting cognitive functions. Increasing lines of studies have revealed that there are numerous risk factors or environmental stress inducing accumulation of pathological factors of AD, termed AD-like pathology. Depression is one of the prominent factors leading to neurodegeneration in AD. Therefore, we attempted to investigate the application of traditional anti-aging herbal medicine, Wolfberry (the fruit of Lycium barbarum), as therapeutic or preventive agent against this risk factor. Our previous studies using neuronal cell cultures have shown that polysaccharide extracted from Wolfberry can reduce β-amyloid peptide neurotoxicity. By using corticosterone to induce depression in male rats, our recent findings have shown that Wolfberry can reduce immobility time in a forced swimming test for testing depression behavior. All the above improvement of animal behavior is accomplished by stimulating neurogenesis in the brain. Besides, Wolfberry can restore the loss of synaptic proteins and spine density in the hippocampus. Taken together, Wolfberry can stimulate neurogenesis and restore synaptic degeneration. This anti-aging Chinese medicine can relieve depressive symptom and prevent neurodegeneration in AD. This example can illustrate multi-targeting effects of Chinese medicine in AD and depression.