Effect of Phosphatidylserine Intake on Health Status in Human

Abstract

With the rapid growth of health functional foods (HFFs), both consumers of HFFs and government authorities have shown significant interest in assessing the health effects of these products. Given these circumstances, we previously conducted a study on the effect of vitamin D. In this study, we focused on examining the health benefits of phosphatidylserine, a lipid recommended for cognitive dysfunction in the elderly. We evaluated the health status of 2,427 participants by having them rate their health status on a 10-point scale ranging from −5 to 5, comparing it to their status one year prior. To ensure the validity of the findings, we further analyzed the resulting scores by comparing consumers and non-consumers across different categories using propensity score matching to minimize potential biases arising from endogeneity among different categories. The results were as follows. The average treatment effect on the treated (ATT) of total 76 consumers and 2,351 non-consumers were 1.447 and 0.768, respectively, which are significantly different (P < 0.001), indicating that intake of phosphatidylserine improves the health status. The difference in the ATT of the consumers and non-consumers was analyzed across the categories and a significant difference was observed from the consumers in the following categories; male (1.0273, P < 0.01) and individuals who are under 50 (0.9889, P < 0.01), living in non-capital area (1.2444, P < 0.01), having the knowledge about HFFs (0.6594, P < 0.01), and experiencing in phosphatidylserine-related diseases such as cognition dysfunction (1.5778, P < 0.01). These findings suggest that intake of phosphatidylserine has a beneficial effect on health particularly, of men, younger individuals in non-capital area, and those experiencing cognitive dysfunction.