Hop compounds help prevent Alzheimer's

Beer is one of the oldest and most popular beverages in the world, and some people love it, some hate the unique bitterness of hops, which are used to flavor
the many flavors of beer.
But a particularly "hoppy-flavored" beer may have unique health benefits
.
A recent study published in the journal ACS Chemical Neuroscience reported that chemicals extracted from hops can inhibit the clotting of amyloid, which has been linked to
Alzheimer's disease (AD), in laboratory petri dishes.

Alzheimer's disease is a debilitating neurodegenerative disease that often manifests as memory loss and personality changes
in older people.
Part of the difficulty in treating this disease lies in the time lag between the onset of the underlying biochemical process and the onset of symptoms, with a gap of several years between the two
.
This means that irreversible damage
to the nervous system occurs before people realize they may have the disease.
Therefore, prevention strategies and treatments that can intervene before symptoms appear are of increasing interest
.

One of these strategies involves "nutraceuticals," i.
e.
foods
that have some kind of medicinal or nutritional function.
The hops used to flavor beer have been explored as one of these potential nutraceuticals, and previous studies have shown that the plant can interfere with the accumulation
of AD-associated amyloid.
So, Cristina Airoldi, Alessandro Palmioli and their colleagues wanted to investigate which compounds in hops had this effect
.

To identify these compounds, the researchers created extracts of four common hop varieties using methods similar to those used in the brewing process and characterized
them.
In tests, they found that the extract had antioxidant properties that prevented β amyloid from clotting in human nerve cells
.
The most successful extracts are extracted from Tettnang hops and are found
in many types of lagers and pale ales.
When the extract was separated into different fractions, the fractions containing high levels of polyphenols showed the strongest antimicrobial and aggregation inhibitory activity
.
It also facilitates the body's process
of clearing misfolded neurotoxic proteins.
Finally, the team tested Tettnang extract in a model of Caenorhabditis elegans and found that it protected nematodes from AD-related paralysis, although the effect was not obvious
.
The researchers said that while the study may not justify drinking more bitter beer, it suggests that hop compounds can serve as the basis for nutritional pharmaceuticals against the
development of AD.

Alessandro Palmioli, Valeria Mazzoni, Ada De Luigi, Chiara Bruzzone, Gessica Sala, Laura Colombo, Chiara Bazzini, Chiara Paola Zoia, Mariagiovanna Inserra, Mario Salmona, Ivano De Noni, Carlo Ferrarese, Luisa Diomede, Cristina Airoldi.
Alzheimer’ s Disease Prevention through Natural Compounds: Cell-Free, In Vitro, and In Vivo Dissection of Hop (Humulus lupulus L.
) Multitarget Activity.
ACS Chemical Neuroscience, 2022