"This improvement was associated with less amyloid plaques - another sign of the disease - in their brains," Pratico added.
Pratico said that the cognitive impairment that had been observed in the mice after three months on the methionine-rich diet was completely reversed after two months on the healthier diet, and they were now able to function normally.
"We believe this finding shows that, even if you suffer from the early effects of MCI or Alzheimer's, switching to a healthier diet that is lower in methionine could be helpful in that memory capacity could be improved," he said.
Pratico stressed that this was not a drug therapy for curing MCI or Alzheimer's, but that it did demonstrate that a lifestyle change such as diet could improve some of the impairments that have already occurred in the brain.
"What it tells us is that the brain has this plasticity to reverse a lot of the bad things that have occurred; the ability to recoup a lot of things such as memory that were apparently lost, but obviously not totally lost," he said.
Pratico also emphasized that the researchers believe that in addition to switching to a healthy diet, patients diagnosed with MCI or Alzheimer's also need a regiment of physical as well as mental exercises.
"This combination won't cure you, but we believe, as we saw in this study, that it will be able to slow down or even possibly reverse the effects on the cognitive impairment," he said.
The study has been published in the Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.
Source-ANI