The effect of licorice and leuzea preparations on cognitive functions in personal anxiery

The aim is o study the spectrum of mnemotropic effects of a combination of licorice and leuzea flower extracts in individuals with moderate and high personal anxiety.

Materials and methods. 230 healthy subjects were divided into groups: 126 subjects with moderate anxiety and 104 subjects with high personal anxiety. The control group was comparable to the experimental group in terms of age and gender. To assess the state of long-term procedural, semantic, and episodic memory, the following psychometric tests were used: "memorizing a procedural skill with a 10-fold choice of direction in a virtual maze," "memorizing a list of 30 monosyllabic words after arithmetic counting," "memorizing 30 events dated in time after arithmetic counting." The analysis of the state of "supportive repetition" was carried out according to the test of "three-fold subvocal repetition of a list of monosyllabic words", and organizing repetition according to "identification of verbal information based on a semantic code in 3 sessions". Statistical processing of the obtained material was carried out using Biostat programs. Some of the studies were subject to the normal distribution law, in this case, the student's t-test and standard deviation (± SD) were calculated. If the studied indicators did not obey the law of normal distribution, nonparametric methods were used: comparison of independent samples using the Mann-Whitney U–test for paired features. The critical significance level when testing statistical hypotheses was assumed to be p <0.05. Voluntary informed consent to the study was obtained from all participants in the study.

Results. In the control group, the time to form a procedural skill in a spatial maze decreased by 9.1% against the background of an average score. In this case, there was a suppression of semantic verbal learning and episodic memorization of time-dated events by an average of 8–10%. Taking licorice with moderate anxiety increases the rate of acquisition of procedural skill by 14% (p<0,05). In the group of patients with high personal anxiety, licorice preparation reduces the time to acquire procedural skills by 25% (p<0,05), and there is also a positive effect of licorice preparation and a combination of plant extracts. The memorization of time-dated words and events increases by 12–15% (p<0,05) on the background of the use of licorice preparation. The combination of plant extracts significantly increases the learning rate involving semantic and episodic memory (by 21% and 27%, respectively, p<0,05). The results of control observations indicate that there is no significant effect of anxiety levels on the effects of reproduction in the subvocal supportive repetition test. On the contrary, the combination of preparations leads to a distinct increase in the effectiveness of organizing repetition based on a semantic code. In people with moderate anxiety, there is an increase in the effectiveness of organizing repetition by about 14%, and in the group with high personal anxiety by 42% (p<0,05).

Conclusion. The dependence of cognitive stimulation on the type of anxiety is clearly manifested when prescribing leuzea extract together with licorice and expands the therapeutic possibilities of the drug combination.

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