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Acetyl-L-carnitine and -lipoic acid supplementation of aged beagle dogs improves learning in two landmark discrimination tests

N. W. Milgram^*,,,1, J. A. Araujo^,, T. M. Hagen, B. V. Treadwell^|| and B. N. Ames^¶,#

^* University of Toronto, Division of Life Sciences, Scarborough, Ontario, Canada;

CanCog Technologies, Toronto, Ontario, Canada;

Department of Pharmacology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada;

Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Linus Pauling Institute, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon, USA;

^|| Juvenon, Inc., Incline Village, Nevada, USA;

^¶ Division of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of California, Berkeley, California, USA; and

^# Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute, Oakland, California, USA

¹Correspondence: CanCog Technologies, 120 Carlton Street, Suite 204, Toronto, ON M5A 4K2, Canada. E-mail: milgram{at}psych.utoronto.ca

Beagle dogs between 7.6 and 8.8 years of age administered a twice daily supplement of -lipoic acid (LA) and acetyl-L-carnitine (ALC) over 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.—Milgram, N. W., Araujo, J. A., Hagen, T. M., Treadwell, B. V., Ames, B. N. Acetyl-L-carnitine and -lipoic acid supplementation of aged beagle dogs improves learning in two landmark discrimination tests.

Key Words: LA • ALC • cognitive aging • mitochondria • visuospatial working memory

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