Ginkbo biloba, widely marketed for years as a memory-enhancing herb, has been found to have no effect on cognitive decline, according to the results of an eight-year study of more than 3,000 elderly men and women.
In the largest study of its kind to date, the Ginkgo Evaluation of Memory (GEM) study was conducted in four medical centers across the U.S. between 2000 and 2008, at a cost of approximately $36.5 million.
More than 3,000 participants between the ages of 72 and 96 (all of whom had normal cognition or mild cognitive decline when the study began) were given either 120 mg of ginkgo twice a day, or placebos that resembled the ginkgo dosages.
This was a double-blind study, which means that neither the participants nor the researchers knew who received ginkgo and who got the placebos.
The results of this gingko study? Ginkgo supplements had no effect on cognitive decline. Or memory, attention, visual-spatial construction (for example, being able to determine if two sets of dots match or are different), language and executive function (time management and organizational abilities).
In previous GEM research, ginkgo was found to have no effect on Alzheimer's symptoms or dementia.
