Curcumin as a Therapeutic Agent in Dementia: A Mini Systematic Review of Human Studies

Table 1

Clinical studies of curcumin use in Alzheimer’s disease.

Study ID	Study design	Sample size	Follow-up period	Curcumin dose	Other medication	Main findings	Adverse events	Current status
Completed studies
Baum et al. 2008 [28]	Randomized, double-blind, placebo controlled	36	6 months	1 g/day or 4 g/day	Gingko biloba standardized leaf extract 120 mg/day, other medication not reported	No differences between curcumin and placebo	No differences between placebo and both curcumin dose groups	Completed and published
Ringman et al. 2012 [29]	Randomized, double-blind, placebo controlled	36	24 weeks + 48 weeks open-label	2 g/day or 4 g/day	Acetylcholinesterase inhibitors and memantine allowed	No differences between curcumin and placebo	No differences between placebo and curcumin	Completed and published
Hishikawa et al. 2012 [30]	Case study, open-label	3	1 year	100 mg/day	Donepezil (dose not reported)	Increase in the NPI-Q score	Not reported	Completed and published
Ongoing trials
NCT00595582	Open-label	10	24 months	5.4 g/day	Bioperidine	All patients did not terminate the study	Dyspepsia (20% of the sample)	Completed
NCT01001637	Randomized, double-blind, placebo controlled	26	2 months	4 g/day or 6 g/day	Allowed stable doses of concomitant medications	—	—	Still recruiting
NCT01383161	Randomized, double-blind, placebo controlled	132	18 months	180 mg/day	Permitted only aspirin (81 mg/die)	—	—	Still recruiting
NCT01811381	Randomized, double-blind, placebo controlled	80	12 months	800 mg/day	Not allowed treatment for cognitive impairment (i.e. cholinesterase inhibitor, memantine) < 6 months prior to study enrollment	—	—	Recruiting will start in September 2013
ACTRN12613000681752	Randomized, double-blind, placebo controlled	200	12 months	500 mg/day for 2 weeks, then 1,000 mg/day for other 2 weeks and then 1500 mg/day onwards	Not allowed warfarin	—	—	Not yet recruiting

Legend. Neuropsychiatric Inventory Questionnaire: NPI-Q.