GlyNAC supplementation improves cognitive decline in older people

As people age, they want to live healthy lives as free from age-related cognitive loss as feasible. This decrease is a natural aspect of ageing. Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine are developing food programmes to promote healthy brain ageing and studying the biochemical reasons of age-related cognitive decline.
The study is published in the journal Antioxidants, researchers found that supplementing with GlyNAC, a compound made up of the amino acids glycine and N-acetylcysteine, which act as precursors to the naturally occurring antioxidant glutathione, improved or reversed age-related cognitive decline in old mice and corrected multiple associated defects in the ageing brain.
Corresponding and senior author Dr. Rajagopal Sekhar, professor of medicine -endocrinology, diabetes and metabolism at Baylor said, "For over two decades, my lab has been studying natural aging in older humans and aged mice."
"Our work provides an understanding of how age-associated cognitive decline in older humans is linked to glutathione deficiency, increased oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, abnormal glucose metabolism and insulin resistance, inflammation and low levels of neurotrophic or neuron-supporting factors, and that supplementing GlyNAC reverses these defects and improves cognition."
This study is significant for a variety of reasons, including the fact that it examines whether age-related cognitive decline that occurs naturally can be reversed as opposed to cognitive decline brought on by introducing gene defects; that getting older is the biggest risk factor for Alzheimer's disease; and that these naturally occurring defects were examined in the brain.