title: Acetyl-L-carnitine and alpha-lipoic acid supplementation of aged beagle dogs improves learning in two landmark discrimination tests.
abstract: Beagle dogs between 7.6 and 8.8 years of age administered a twice daily supplement of alpha-lipoic acid (LA) and acetyl-L-carnitine (ALC) over approximately 2 months made significantly fewer errors in reaching the learning criterion on two landmark discrimination tasks compared to controls administered a methylcellulose placebo. Testing started after a 5 day wash-in. The dogs were also tested on a variable delay version of a previously acquired spatial memory task; results were not significant. The improved performance on the landmark task of dogs supplemented with LA + ALC provides evidence of the effectiveness of this supplement in improving discrimination and allocentric spatial learning. We suggest that long-term maintenance on LA and ALC may be effective in attenuating age-associated cognitive decline by slowing the rate of mitochondrial decay and cellular aging.
authors.affiliation: University of Toronto, Division of Life Sciences, Scarborough, Ontario, Canada. milgram@psych.utoronto.ca
authors.forename: N W
authors.initials: NW
authors.lastname: Milgram
authors.forename: J A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Araujo
authors.forename: T M
authors.initials: TM
authors.lastname: Hagen
authors.forename: B V
authors.initials: BV
authors.lastname: Treadwell
authors.forename: B N
authors.initials: BN
authors.lastname: Ames
mesh_terms: D000108:Acetylcarnitine / Q000008:administration & dosage* / Q000494:pharmacology; D000818:Animals; D004285:Dogs; D007858:Learning; D010919:Placebos; D008063:Thioctic Acid / Q000008:administration & dosage* / Q000494:pharmacology
chemical_list: D010919:Placebos; D000108:Acetylcarnitine; D008063:Thioctic Acid