Earlier this month, I wrote a post about the potential of curcumin, the yellow pigment found in tumeric, a common ingredient in curry, to protect against cognitive decline and slow the development of Alzheimer’s disease (AD).
A recent study reaffirms curcumin’s anti-inflammatory properties and found that it significantly reduced inflammation in rats with rheumatoid arthritis. As the study abstract notes:
Turmeric has been used for centuries in Ayurvedic medicine as a treatment for inflammatory disorders including arthritis. On the basis of this traditional usage, dietary supplements containing turmeric rhizome and turmeric extracts are also being used in the western world for arthritis treatment and prevention.
To-date, this study has been one of the few in-vivo (in animal or people) studies performed using curcumin.
It’s believed that curcumin inhibits the NF-KappaB inflammation pathway, which acts as the innate immune system’s master-switch. However, the authors of this study, as well as the authors of this review of curcumin’s effects, mention the NF-kappaB inflammatory pathway may be just one of many that curcumin helps to control:
Modern science has revealed that curcumin mediates its effects by modulation of several important molecular targets, including transcription factors (e.g., NF-kappaB, AP-1, Egr-1, beta-catenin, and PPAR-gamma), enzymes (e.g., COX2, 5-LOX, iNOS, and hemeoxygenase-1), cell cycle proteins (e.g., cyclin D1 and p21), cytokines (e.g., TNF, IL-1, IL-6, and chemokines), receptors (e.g., EGFR and HER2), and cell surface adhesion molecules.
Hopefully we’ll see some controlled intervention human studies in the future to provide even better evidence of curcumin’s effects in inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, as well as in other diseases with significant inflammatory components, such as inflammatory bowel disease, asthma, Alzheimer’s disease, and even cancer.
