Does sunflower phosphatlyserine work that same as soy based phosphatlyserine?
Answer: My first guess would be, yes. P-serine is a molecule, it will be p-serine regardless of its source. It does have two chiral centers, however I doubt that isomers exist in high concentrations in nature.
Phosphatidylserine (PS) is a member of the membrane phospholipids that is especially abundant in the brain. Because of its presence in the brain, the effects of PS on the central nervous system have been widely investigated [1–5]. Several clinical studies in the US and Europe have shown that PS extracted from the bovine cortex (BC-PS) improves the cognitive function of the elderly [6–10] including Alzheimer’s disease patients [8, 9] and people with age-associated memory impairment (AAMI) [10]. However, the use of BC-PS in medicine or dietary supplements is now discouraged because of the risk of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) [11]. In addition, only about 3 grams of PS can be obtained from one bovine cortex, which is too small for inexpensive supply.
Efforts to overcome these problems have led to the development of soybean-derived PS (Soy-PS), a BSE risk-free PS that is enzymatically made from soybean lecithin [12]. Even though the acyl-groups of Soy-PS are quite different from that of BC-PS, studies using drug-induced amnesic and aged rodents have suggested that the effects of Soy-PS on cognitive function are identical to that of BC-PS [13–16].
However, the results of clinical studies using Soy-PS are controversial. In 1995, Gindin et al. [17] first reported a clinical study of Soy-PS, where Soy-PS treatment (300 mg/day for 3 months) on elderly people with AAMI improved their Wechsler Memory test scores, especially in the components of the test that evaluated visual memory. In their study, the effect of Soy-PS was evident only in the subgroup of subjects that had higher pre-treatment scores. Crooket al. [18] reported that Soy-PS (300 mg/day for 12 weeks) was effective in improving memory functions, such as memorizing names and faces, of elderly people with AAMI. Schreiber et al. [19] also reported similar results that Soy-PS was most effective on memorizing faces.
Jorissen et al. [20] performed a double-blind placebo-controlled study to evaluate the efficacy of two different doses of Soy-PS (300 or 600 mg/day for 12 weeks) on the elderly with AAMI. Although various aspects of cognitive function including memory, information processing speed, selective attention, and planning were measured, no difference was found between placebo and Soy-PS treated groups even with the higher dosage. Thus, it is still controversial whether Soy-PS is effective for the elderly with memory impairment. Furthermore, there has been no clinical study that evaluates the effects of PS on memory impairment using Japanese subjects.
To clarify whether Soy-PS is beneficial for cognitive function of the elderly, we conducted a preliminarily open-trial test in 2005 and found that 12 weeks of Soy-PS treatment (300 mg/day) on elderly people with mild memory impairment improved their scores on the revised version of Hasegawa’s dementia scale (HDS-R) [21], a general test used for diagnosis of dementia in Japan. Improvement was especially evident in the delayed 3 words recall (DWR) subtest. In addition, the effect of Soy-PS on DWR was maintained for 12 weeks after the treatment period was over. Based on these results, we next planned a double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical study.
