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Water Industry News
Mineral water could
reduce aluminum in Alzheimer's disease
25 May 2006
Scientists at Keele University in Staffordshire have found that drinking a
well-known mineral water regularly could reduce the levels of aluminium in
the bodies of people with Alzheimer's disease.
Ten individuals with Alzheimer's were asked to drink up to 1.5L per day of
the mineral water, Volvic, for five days as part of their everyday diets.
For eight out of ten it resulted in a reduction in their body burden of
aluminium.
There is a link between human exposure to aluminium and the incidence of
Alzheimer's disease. The objective of the research was to demonstrate a
simple method whereby individuals with Alzheimer's disease (and indeed
healthy individuals) could both limit their absorption of aluminium across
the gut and increase their excretion of body aluminium in the urine.
Volvic is a still mineral water containing a high concentration of silicon
and the research team believes that it was the silicon (the natural
protector against the toxicity of aluminium) in the mineral water which
helped to reduce the body burden of aluminium in the individuals with
Alzheimer's disease.
Dr Chris Exley, of the Birchall Centre for Inorganic Chemistry and
Materials Science, Lennard-Jones Laboratories at Keele, said: “This was
a preliminary study involving only ten individuals and was carried out
over only five consecutive days. We do not have any information concerning
any influence of drinking the mineral water upon the disease itself only
that there were no reported negative side effects.”
“A future study is needed to confirm that long term drinking of a
silicon-rich mineral water can reduce the body burden of aluminium in
Alzheimer's disease. We shall then be able to determine if concomitant
with the reduction in body aluminium there are improvements in the nature
and progression of the disease.”
“There is no benefit in accumulating aluminium in our bodies. Anything
we can do to reduce its entry and build up in the body can only be
beneficial to our health and regular drinking of silicon-rich mineral
waters may be a safe and easy way to achieve the lowest possible body
burden of aluminium”.
In the only human trial to date to remove aluminium from the body of
individuals with Alzheimer's disease, the iron chelator desferrioxamine (DFO)
was successfully used to both remove aluminium from the body and slow the
rate of progression of the disease. This trial, which was reported in The
Lancet in 1991, has not been repeated and that may have been due to the
need to inject DFO into the muscle to administer it and side-effects
associated with the reaction of DFO with body iron.
Importantly, considering the earlier study using the iron chelator DFO,
the new research did not influence body stores of iron and no negative
side-effects of drinking the mineral water were reported.
KEELE UNIVERSITY
Keele
Staffordshire
ST5 5BG
rda28@keele.ac.uk
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