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Risk-Benefit Analysis of Phospholipid Therapy

Banner​The Forever Healthy Foundation announces the public launch of the Risk-Benefit Analysis of Phospholipid Therapy, a structured review of the published evidence. It is the sixth publication of Forever Healthy’s “Rejuvenation Now” initiative following the “Risk & Benefit Analysis Dasatinib and Quercetin as a Senolytic Therapy”. 

Forever Healthy’s “Rejuvenation Now” initiative seeks to continuously identify potential rejuvenation therapies and systematically evaluates them on risks, benefits, and therapeutic protocols to create transparency regarding the current state of said therapies.

Phospholipids – a powerful rejuvenation therapy?

Phospholipids are an important structural component of cell and organelle membranes and play a role in many cell signaling pathways. Membranes incur oxidative damage over time and in several disease conditions. Oral and/or i.v. supplementation of phospholipids (particularly phosphatidylcholine), is hypothesized to repair this damage by replacement of oxidized membrane phospholipids with “healthy” phospholipids, thus restoring or maintaining membrane integrity and function.

Methods & Results

For this risk and benefit analysis, the team at Forever Healthy screened more than 3500 scientific papers and included the results of more than 400 clinical studies in its analysis.

The analysis shows that there is good evidence that Phospholipid Therapy is effective for short-medium term use in the treatment of many disease conditions. The benefits are mostly of small magnitude, and dependent on continuous supplementation as they diminished significantly when therapy was discontinued. There are almost no reported serious adverse drug effects, regardless of route of administration.

However, despite the widespread use of Phospholipid Therapy over the last 50 years, data on the benefits in healthy individuals is extremely limited.

On the other hand, the major long-term risks, though largely still hypothetical, are serious. Recent publications on high dietary intake of phosphatidylcholine and its correlation with increased all-cause mortality, increased risk of lethal prostate cancer, and increased risk of acute myocardial infarction warrant serious reflection on the safety of long-term supplementation with phosphatidylcholine-containing products. A possible explanatory mechanism for the damage caused by the consumption of high levels of choline-containing products has already been shown in a clinical study.

Based on the analysis of all currently available data, we find that short-term supplementation with phosphatidylcholine is a potential treatment option for cases of known liver disease, cognitive impairment, or in conjunction with NSAIDs.

Whether the benefits may also outweigh the risks in a generally healthy population is unknown. If one decides to supplement with phospholipids, risk mitigation measures such as measurement of TMAO and stool analysis should be performed regularly.

We recommend against the use of phosphatidylcholine supplementation in the case of known cardiovascular disease until the situation regarding the PC-related production of TMAO and its role in CVD has been further clarified.

More details, including an in-depth analysis of all risks & benefits, can be found here.

About Forever Healthy

Forever Healthy is Michael Greve’s humanitarian initiative with the mission of enabling people to vastly extend their healthy lifespan.

Through its “Maximizing Health” and “Rejuvenation Now” initiatives Forever Healthy reviews the latest medical knowledge, creates actionable guides to maximize health and well-being and evaluates currently available rejuvenation therapies.

The foundation’s “Health & Longevity Strategy” combines the results of “Maximizing Health” and “Rejuvenation Now” with the latest knowledge from selected experts to create a step-by-step guide on how to maximize our health, well-being, and longevity right now.

Forever Healthy’s annual Undoing Aging conference brings together leading scientists and startups from around the globe to accelerate the development of human rejuvenation therapies.

In addition, Forever Healthy seeks to accelerate the advent of rejuvenation biotechnology by funding translational research and supporting startups in the field.

For more information, please visit: forever-healthy.org