NATURAL SUPPLEMENT TO CUT CHOLESTEROL ALSO REDUCES ANXIETY

A natural food supplement ordinarily used to lower cholesterol was found to reduce anxiety in mice, according to a new Weizmann Institute of Science study, Abigail Klein Leichman reported for the ISRAEL21c magazine recently.

The plant-derived substance, beta-sitosterol, calmed the lab mice by itself and also worked synergistically with the antidepressant drug Prozac. Developing antianxiety drugs is challenging because the brain circuits for anxiety are closely related to those responsible for memory, awareness, and other functions vital for handling danger.

Scientists try to find compounds that selectively suppress anxiety without causing unwanted side effects.

Several years ago, Prof. Mike Fainzilber’s biomolecular sciences lab at Weizmann discovered that in stressful situations, mice lacking the protein importin alpha-five showed less anxiety than the control mice. The calmer mice were found to have about 120 genes with a characteristic pattern of expression in the hippocampus, one of the brain regions that regulate anxiety.

In the new study, Fainzilber lab senior intern Nicolas Panayotis led a search of an international genomic database for existing drugs or other compounds that might mimic the same gene expression signature. He identified five candidates and tested their effects on behavior in mice.

That was how the researchers zeroed in on beta-sitosterol, a plant substance now sold as a dietary supplement intended mainly to reduce cholesterol levels. In a series of behavioral experiments, mice given beta-sitosterol showed much less anxiety than the control group.

They were, for example, less fearful than the controls when placed in an illuminated enclosure, daring to walk into its brightly lit center, whereas the control mice stayed on the darker periphery, avoiding the stress of the bright light.

Moreover, the mice receiving beta-sitosterol did not exhibit any of the side effects that might be expected from antianxiety medications – their locomotion was not impaired, and they did not refrain from exploring novel stimuli.

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