SOURSOP / GRAVIOLA Causes Parkinsons But Peat Likes It

[Ben Stone]

I have come to love Soursop in the past few months. I came across this disturbing article indicating toxicity associated with this fruit. Soursop was on a list of fruits that Peat likes - perhaps it should be considered for only infrequent use and not regular consumption, any one care to share their views? Many seek an anti-cancer benefit from it, I just love the taste.

Toxicology expert raises alarm over potential neurotoxins in graviola/soursop

“I did nutrition research in Guam in the early 1980s on behalf of a legislative committee on the island over a span of three years and we found an association between chronic fruit consumption and atypical Parkinson's disease [that was] shocking. 67% of Parkinson's cases were of the atypical form, compared to less than 5% in Europe.”

"decoctions of the fruit have been shown in both in vitro and in vivo experiments to be a potentially toxic inhibitor of the mitochondrial respiratory chain."

 

[Ben Stone]

More on Parkinsonisms and Soursop / Graviola / Guanabana here:

PAQ-ing more punch for Parkinson’s

 

[Ben Stone]

Other annonas like Cherimoya could also be as potentially dangerous:

The Fruit of Annona Squamosa L. As a Source of Environmental Neurotoxins: From Quantification of Squamocin to Annotation of Annonaceous Acetogenins by LC-MS/MS Analysis - PubMed

 

[Energizer]

They showed an association among certain island populations, not a causation. The distinction is important. Quite frankly, the motivations for such research seem questionable from the getgo. This seems less like they trying to alert the public to potential "harm" and more like they are just wanting to build ammunition for the FDA and other regulation agencies to gather a witchhunt after chemical and supplement suppliers. Otherwise I suppose gross incompetence could explain how they could come to the conclusion of thinking a natural fruit is inherently harmful, it seems pretty ridiculous and flies in the face of common sense and experience.

 

[Ben Stone]

The blog post linked in my second post above is well done. I am not in agreement that this is following an anti supplement agenda but appreciate your views.

 

[Energizer]

As I am looking at the 2nd post you linked, it seems like they are looking too narrowly at the island populations, looking only at island populations with Parksinson's and not the whole island populations. This is also a ridiculously small sample of people.

"Between August of 1996 and August of 1998, a total of 87 people with features of Parkinson’s disease were referred to the Neurology Department at the University Hospital in Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe.

Of the 87 individuals referred, a total of 22 were diagnosed with classical idiopathic Parkinson’s, while 31 had Progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), 30 had atypical parkinsonisms, and the remaining four had atypical parkinsonism associated with motor neuron disease (basically the doctors had a hard time diagnosing them)."​

To me, this isn't good science. Where's the control? And more importantly, if they thought soursop is really toxic, or a cause of Parkinson's, they should test that in an animal model.

"The researchers found that of the 31 individuals diagnosed with PSP in their cohort (or affected population), 29 of them reported regular consumption of Soursop fruit (also known as corossol), and 26 of them drank tea infusions made from the leaves of plant on a frequent basis."​

"But the investigators also found that all of the atypical Parkinsonisms cases regularly consumed Soursop fruit, and 24 of them (out of the 30) frequently drank tea made from the fruit."

Yes, surprise surprise, all of the Parksinon's people consumed Soursoup regularly, but they left out the popularity and frequency of Soursop consumption amongst the rest of the islanders that were healthy. What a convenient oversight.

"When the investigators exposed dopamine neurons being grown in cell culture to the total extract of Annona muricata rootbark, they observed 50% loss of dopamine neurons after 24 hours (at 18 micrograms/ml). Dopamine neurons being one of the populations of cells in the brain that are badly affected by Parkinson’s. The nuclei of the dying neurons exposed to the extract exhibited DNA condensation and fragmentation, which suggested that the cells were dying via programmed cells death (or apoptosis). This indicated to the researchers that there was a toxin in the extract of the Annona muricata plant."​

Extract =/ the entire fruit.

"Prof Figadère and his colleagues started this endeavour by extracting many different forms of natural tryptaminic alkaloid compounds from Annonaceae plants, and investigated their neurotrophic properties. These ‘structure associated relationship’ (SAR) investigations resulted in 18 compounds being tested on dopamine neurons grown in culture. These experiments identified a 6 compounds that demonstrated the ability to help the dopamine cells to survive. The researchers further investigated for antioxidant activity of those 6 compounds, before then evaluating their ability to cross the blood-brain-barrier (a protective membrane that surrounds the brain, blocking the entrance of many compounds). This identified one compound (called 4C) which exhibited interesting properties."​

To me this indicates you can look at any compounds in isolation from the whole fruit and come to a wide variety of conclusions. But this has no baring on the whole fruit. I am not a biochemist obviously, just a layman, these are my impressions looking more closely.

"In this post we have explored how a fruit that could potential cause Parkinson’s-like conditions, can also provide the means by which we can hopefully prevent them. While it is unlikely that all cases of Parkinsonisms are caused by neurotoxins absorbed from eating fruit, it is a wondrous thing that researchers can derive chemicals from the seemingly toxic fruit and – via a repeated process of analysing similarly structured compounds – derive molecules that can exert powerful neuroprotective effects."​

It is unlikely that any Parkinson's has been caused by eating any of said fruit, let's just make that clear. "Seemingly toxic fruit" yes, seemingly. It's interesting how they can cast aspersions on a natural fruit by using mere association and yet prove nothing and show nothing other than an association between a particular compound and toxicity in an in vivo study of live isolated cells rather than studying the whole organism.

"decoctions of the fruit have been shown in both in vitro and in vivo experiments to be a potentially toxic inhibitor of the mitochondrial respiratory chain."​

From what they wrote, they talk about "potentially toxic compounds" in the decoctions, but they don't demonstrate the teas themselves are toxic. They then use this strawman as "evidence" that the fruit itself is causing degenerative diseases. Now, they could be right about the tea being toxic, but they didn't prove it was. There are certain fruits and plants which are toxic naturally, but these aren't consumed by indigenous populations for thousands of years.

In this other link, Toxicology expert raises alarm over potential neurotoxins in graviola/soursop

They post animal studies with the isolated compounds of the fruit such as annonacin again as evidence of "potential toxicity of fruit and leaves", but this is also not direct evidence of the fruit itself being harmful, and again, doesn't show what they are claiming. I am not arguing that they are wrong necessarily about potential harm, there's a small possibility they could be right (although doubtful). But they never proved it with any of the research that I've seen here. If they did a followup with soursoup consumption in an animal model randomized placebo controlled and demonstrated a causative factor in animals, in other words, a direct relationship between Soursop consumption and Parkinson's, I would find that a much more convincing argument.

 

[Ben Stone]

Thanks @Energizer for your detailed examination. I plan to reach out to the authors of the papers with some followup questions and will report back. I agree seems like there may be confounding variables and considering the fruit is apparently so widely consumed the increased reported risks might be happenstance. I could see the tea infusion from leaves carrying a higher risk as it might concentrate toxic components.

 

[ddjd]

View: https://twitter.com/thehealthb0t/status/1703468916939313172?s=19

 

[Herbie]

If parkinsons disease is caused by endotoxin, I would look at how soursop and how it may or may not effect endotoxin.