Effect of the nutritional supplement ALAnerv® on the serum PON1 activity in post-acute stroke patients

BackgroundParaoxonase-1 (PON1) is one of the HDL-associated proteins which contributes to the antioxidant properties of these lipoproteins. The aim of this pilot study was to evaluate the effect of the nutritional supplement ALAnerv® on serum PON1 activity in post-acute stroke patients undergoing rehabilitation.MethodsWe enrolled 28 post-acute stroke patients and randomly divided them into (–) ALAor (+) ALAstudy groups. All the patients underwent the same rehabilitation program and received comparable standard medications. Moreover, (+) ALA patients received ALAnerv® for two weeks (2 pills/day). The serum PON1 activity was assessed on blood samples taken at the admission and at the discharge moments, respectively. We used paraoxon (paraoxonase activity, PONA), phenyl acetate (arylesterase activity, ARYLA) and dihydrocoumarin (lactonase activity, LACTA) as substrates, the latter activity being regarded as physiologically relevant. A control group of 14 apparently healthy subjects was also created.ResultsIn the (+) ALAgroup, LACTAsignificantly increased during the study period (17.6 ± 3.2 vs. 27.6 ± 3.5, p = 0.002). Moreover, the percentage of LACTAvariation between (–) ALAand (+) ALAgroups during the study was also statistically different (–11.7 ± 6.9% vs. +95.1 ± 29.7%, p < 0.0001).ConclusionsThese preliminary results suggest that ALAnerv® could contribute to the improvement of the physiologically relevant LACTAof PON1 in post-acute stroke patients, enabling this enzyme to contribute to the redox correction. Also, this study raises the question about the effect of a longer treatment period over the other enzymatic activities of serum PON1.