This comes after Alphagen NZ Ltd, the company that owns Ārepa, received a notice in late 2023 from the country’s Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) about its health claims and product labelling.
Since then, Ārepa has worked closely with MPI to “gain full compliance” with the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code.
“We faced hurdles with MPI in regard to how much we could talk about our published research on our formula or ingredients on our website and packaging. As a fast-growing innovative company, we have learned about the pathways to make defensible health claims.
“We are directing our future pipeline of clinical studies to be more aligned in repeating the known effects to be set as primary outcomes (rather than secondary), and scale up the sample size to achieve health claims in multiple markets and regulatory frameworks,” Angus Brown, co-founder and co-CEO of Ārepa, told NutraIngredients-Asia.
The firm is now lodging multiple health claims through the preferred systematic review substantiation process.
Specifically, it has filed seven health claims to Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) after compiling a scientific dossier. Once substantiated by MPI, it will allow Ārepa to communicate science-backed health claims around L-Theanine in its products.
“We started with L-theanine, as there is a good body of information now available. We will also proceed to substantiate health claims for our formula and unique ingredient Neuroberry, as the research we are conducting moves through to publication.
“Similar to the past four years, we will continue to publish more research on our formula and ingredients at a rate faster than most of our competitors across APAC, and to share that news via our communication platforms and regular marketing activity. We have a lot coming through that would differentiate us in the space of brain health and performance globally.”
According to Brown, the packaging for Ārepa’s Brain Drinks and Brain Powder has been updated to be MPI-approved, and can be expected to be seen on shelves within the next six months.
Neuroprotective effects in cyclists
To date, two studies done on Ārepa, both funded by New Zealand’s High-Value Nutrition (HVN) National Science Challenge, have been published.
The first study investigated how polyphenol supplementation could affect the level of Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) in male cyclists exposed to polluted air during exercise.
BDNF is crucial for neuronal growth and survival as well as cognitive processes like learning and memory. While exercise is known to elevate levels of BDNF, exercising in polluted air has been shown to inhibit BDNF secretion.
In this double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover trial, 10 participants were randomly assigned to consume either polyphenol (POLY) or placebo (PL) for seven days.
The POLY supplement was Ᾱrepa’s formula of freeze-dried NZ blackcurrant, L-theanine and pine bark extract, and was prescribed as a relative dose of 4.3mg/kg anthocyanins.
After seven days of intervention, the participants carried out the exercise protocol — increasing exercise intensity progressively over a 25-minute period and then cycling with maximal effort for 4km under ambient air. This was followed by two exercise trials in an ozone-polluted environment (0.25 ppm).
It was found that serum BDNF levels increased in both POLY (35%) and PL (29%) groups following exercise in an ozone-polluted environment. Notably, significantly higher BDNF levels (p = 0.013) were observed in the POLY group compared to PL.
“The results indicate that exercise combined with polyphenol supplementation increases BDNF levels in healthy cyclists exercising in poor air quality. While the participants’ cognitive performance did not worsen post-exercise, the lack of improvement suggests a potential negative effect of ozone on cognitive domains assessing attention and executive function,” the authors wrote.
Dr Lillian Morton, University of Auckland scientist who led the study, said that future research would require bigger sample sizes to verify these findings.
“There is value in exploring the potential of exercise in combination with Neuroberry or other anthocyanin-rich fruit in ambient air conditions, particularly in populations at risk of cognitive decline,” she added.
Impact of flavonoid supplementation
A more recently published study assessed the effects of Ārepa on stress response, cognitive performance, mood, and gut microbiome.
A total of 38 healthy female adults were randomly assigned to daily consumption of a “flavonoid-rich blackcurrant beverage” (FBB) or a placebo beverage for four weeks.
One of the key findings is the improvement to cognitive performance following the intervention — the FBB group showed a 33% improvement (P < 0.001) in letter retrieval scores, a measure of working memory, whereas no change was observed in the placebo group (P = 0.331).
The results are consistent with previous reports describing cognitive benefits of supplementation with anthocyanin-rich fruits and flavonoid-rich foods or beverages.
“Memory appears to be a specific cognitive domain sensitive to flavonoid supplementation, although direct comparisons are limited by differences in cognitive testing paradigms.
“Although improvements to the letter recall task do relate to working memory function, this cannot be isolated from attention and executive functioning, both required to perform throughout the multitasking paradigm. Regardless, it is promising to see benefits for performance in healthy, younger populations, which is a critical time for brain health optimisation and disease prevention,” the authors said.
In addition, although the FBB did not alter gut microbiome composition or diversity, participants who had greater improvements in cognitive responses following FBB supplementation, had a higher relative abundance of Bifidobacterium spp. at baseline.
This implicates the gut microbiome’s role in mediating the benefits of flavonoid-rich intervention.
“Our research adds to a growing body of evidence, which supports flavonoids as a plausible preventative strategy to tackle interrelated brain and mental health disorders, but improvements to secondary outcomes observed should be confirmed in larger sample sizes with a longer intervention period.
“Further studies are needed to understand whether enhanced intervention effects can be observed with a more targeted approach through gut microbiome profiling at baseline or perhaps with concurrent probiotic supplementation.”
