Consuming Oleuropein May Mitigate the Effects of Aging on Muscular Atrophy

New research from the University of Padova in Italy and the Nestle Institute of Health Sciences sug­gests that con­sum­ing olive leaf extract could reduce the effects of aging on mus­cles.

The study, pub­lished as a pre-print on BioRxiv, mean­ing it has not been peer-reviewed yet, found that aged mice fed dietary olive leaf extract with oleu­ropein demon­strated improved cal­cium uptake. This enhanced mito­chon­dr­ial func­tion, allow­ing the mice to run longer and increas­ing their mus­cle mass.

The study would be the first to show that mito­chon­dria func­tion­ing can be tar­geted directly with mol­e­cules nat­u­rally found in olives and olive leaves. Mitochondria are cell organelles that use aer­o­bic res­pi­ra­tion to gen­er­ate chem­i­cal energy used through­out the cell.

According to pre­vi­ous research, cal­cium uptake in mito­chon­dria declines dur­ing aging. This likely con­tributes to sar­cope­nia, a type of mus­cle loss that nat­u­rally occurs in the aging process.

The researchers said the study serves as a good first step in deter­min­ing the ther­a­peu­tic value of oleu­ropein for sar­cope­nia and other types of mus­cle atro­phy.

“The min­eral cal­cium is involved in all skele­tal mus­cle con­trac­tion, and the authors state that they are the first to dis­cover that a decrease in cal­cium uptake by the mito­chon­dria con­tributes to the mito­chon­dr­ial decline asso­ci­ated with aging,” Mary M. Flynn, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of med­i­cine and founder of the Olive Oil Health Initiative of the Miriam Hospital at Brown University, told Olive Oil Times.

“They screened sev­eral polyphe­nols and found that oleu­ropein could bind at the site where the cal­cium would enter the mito­chon­dria, which then allows the cal­cium to enter the cell, thus avoid­ing the mito­chon­dr­ial decline, and this was shown to improve and allow mito­chon­dr­ial activ­ity (or use of oxy­gen to pro­duce energy) to hap­pen,” she added.

According to Simon Poole, a physi­cian, author and nutri­tion instruc­tor for the Olive Oil Times Sommelier Certification Program, the research could add to the com­pendium of known olive oil health ben­e­fits. However, he warned that results from stud­ies in mice can­not be auto­mat­i­cally trans­lated to humans.

“This study adds to the expand­ing data­base of research which shows poten­tial ben­e­fi­cial effects of olive tree polyphe­nols such as oleu­ropein on cel­lu­lar struc­tures includ­ing mito­chon­dria, and by impli­ca­tion on cell aging,” he said.

“It is impor­tant to remain cau­tious when con­sid­er­ing results from ani­mal stud­ies and also where extracts of nat­u­rally occur­ring com­pounds are used,” Poole added. ​“It is often dif­fi­cult to repli­cate study results when using sup­ple­ments in humans, espe­cially when researchers are look­ing for mea­sur­able health out­comes.”

Based on the dosages given to the mice by researchers, Flynn said the study could be recre­ated in humans.

“Research like this has to start in ani­mals, and how that will then trans­late to humans is not known,“ Flynn said. ​“If the same effect (i.e., halt­ing the nat­ural decline in mito­chon­dr­ial activ­ity with aging) could be shown in humans, that would have very inter­est­ing impli­ca­tions.”

“The study was in mice, and they used a dose of 40 per­cent oleu­ropein at 50 mil­ligrams per kilo­gram and found ben­e­fit,” she added. ​“Using the same dose in a human exper­i­ment, per 45.4 kilo­grams (100 lbs), that would be 2,270 mil­ligrams or 2 grams of oleu­ropein per 100 lbs,” she said. ​“That does not sound like a lot, so it may be doable.”

Poole con­cluded that regard­less of the next steps in the research, the study demon­strated that polyphe­nols have more pro­found health impacts than reduc­ing inflam­ma­tion and oxi­da­tions.

“This study does, how­ever, rep­re­sent more intrigu­ing evi­dence to sup­port the notion that polyphe­nol com­pounds pro­duced by the olive tree may have bio­log­i­cal effects not only on path­ways of inflam­ma­tion and oxi­da­tion but also on the struc­tures that power much of the bio­chem­istry of cells,” he said.

• NMN