Ginkgo Biloba Improves Tardive Dyskinesia
Tardive dyskinesia is a sometimes irreversible side effect of antipsychotic treatment, and is characterized by uncontrollable, subtle and spontaneous motor movements, usually of the tongue, mouth, or fingers.
Extracts of the leaves of the gingko biloba tree contain potent antioxidants. In a study published by Zhang et al. in the journal Biological Psychiatry in 2012, treatment with ginkgo biloba (EGb-761) at 240mg/day for 12 weeks improved tardive dyskinesia more than placebo. Patients with tardive dyskinesia had low levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) at baseline, and gingko biloba increased these levels. BDNF is important for the production and protection of neurons, and maintaining long-term memory.
The increase in BDNF was correlated with the degree of improvement achieved with gingko biloba in these patients. Different people have different variations in the gene for BDNF. As a result, some people’s BDNF is transported to dendrites and synapses more efficiently than others’. Improvement was greatest in those patients with the most common and best-functioning variant of BDNF, Val66Val, and worst in those patients with the rare and poorest-functioning variant, Met66Met.
Editor’s Note: These findings could be of great clinical importance. Tardive dyskinesia occurred in 20 to 40% of patients with bipolar disorder following treatment with the older “typical” antipsychotics. The incidence is much lower with the newer “atypical” antipsychotics, but having an effective and well-tolerated treatment for this disfiguring side effect is an extra bonus.
