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Donald K Ingram, Blue Versus Gray: Potential Health Benefits of Blueberries for Successful Aging, The Journals of Gerontology: Series A, Volume 74, Issue 7, July 2019, Pages 965–966, https://doi.org/10.1093/gerona/glz094
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The articles presented in this special collection of the Biological Sciences Section of The Journals of Gerontology emerged from a symposium titled “Blue versus Gray: Potential Health Benefits of Blueberries for Successful Aging,” held at the International Congress of Gerontology, in San Francisco, California, the United States, on July 27, 2017. The epidemiological evidence is strong and convincing regarding the health benefits of a diet rich in fruits and vegetables to ward off age-related diseases. However, what about individual foods? Since the 1990s, research on the health benefits of blueberries has grown exponentially. Prior to the first few articles published on the subject, there were no health claims for this fruit. Blueberries were merely an interesting commodity consumed for dietary reasons alone. Then a few studies documented that this fruit ranked highest in antioxidant activity compared to many other popular fruits (1). Given the connection between oxidative stress and age-related diseases, this finding spurred great interest. Moreover, preclinical rodent studies began to demonstrate benefits of blueberry-enriched diets on functional performance during aging (2). Over the last two decades, this basic research expanded to document many beneficial effects of blueberry supplementation on rodent disease models, such as hypertension, cardiac infarct, obesity, and Alzheimer’s disease (3). Moreover, other mechanisms for the health benefits of blueberries, such as their anti-inflammatory properties, have been identified (3). In addition, carefully conducted clinical trials have been initiated to further bolster the preclinical findings. The articles included in this special collection cover a wide range of topics, which document and discuss these health benefits. Dr. Ana Rodriguez-Mateos presents a review of clinical trials that showed beneficial vascular effects of a blueberry-supplemented diet with a focus on flow-mediated dilation as the health measure (4). Applying metabolomics and nutrigenomics, she describes the anthocyanin metabolites that appear to mediate these effects. Three other articles in this issue focus on cognitive effects of blueberry supplementation. One of the pioneers of preclinical research in this area, Dr. Barbara Shukitt-Hale, presents data on memory performance of blueberry-supplemented aged rats compared to rats on a control diet. She describes individual responses to the diet as measured in a maze task (5). Dr. Claire Williams reviews her series of clinical studies focusing on cognitive benefits of blueberry supplementation with a focus on specific memory effects in children as well as older adults with mild cognitive impairment (6). As further evidence of the cognitive benefits of blueberries, Dr. Veronique Pallet and her colleagues present data from a clinical trial using a polyphenol-rich extract from grape and blueberry on memory of healthy elderly participants (60–70 years old) (7). In sum, this collection of articles bolsters the research literature supporting the claims that blueberry consumption can promote successful aging.
