Professor Claire Williams

Affiliation 

Chair of Neuroscience, University of Reading

Bio 

Professor Williams is Chair of Neuroscience in the School of Psychology & Clinical Language Sciences at the University of Reading, UK. She received her PhD in Psychology from the University of Reading in 2000. Her research group, the Nutritional Psychology laboratory, investigates the health benefits of plant-derived chemicals. The main focus of her laboratory is the interplay between dietary intake and measures of psychological well-being such as cognitive performance, food preference, mood, and quality of life using a wide range of techniques (e.g. animal studies, randomised controlled trials, neuroimaging) and population groups (e.g., school-aged children, healthy adults, older adults, patients with mild cognitive impairment). The group have published a number of articles including a demonstration that improvements in spatial working memory induced by a high flavonoid diet can be linked to de novo protein synthesis in rat hippocampus, flavonoid supplementation is associated with increased cerebral blood perfusion in healthy older adults, and that single acute doses of blueberries can significantly improve memory and attention in children aged 8-10 years old. She has published more than eighty peer-reviewed research articles, five book chapters and is listed as an inventor on six international patent families, including 34 worldwide granted patents..

Title

Effects of daily wild blueberry consumption on cognitive and vascular function in healthy older individuals: a randomized double blind controlled trial (the BluFlow trial)

Claire M. Williams, Sabine Hein, Eleanor Wood & Ana Rodriguez-Mateos

Abstract

Recent evidence suggests that (poly)phenols found in blueberries may have benefits for human health, particularly on cognitive and cardiovascular function. Using a parallel-groups, double-blind, placebo-controlled design, we investigated the impact of 12-week daily consumption of wild blueberry (WBB) on cognitive performance, vascular function and cerebral blood flow in healthy older individuals aged 65-80. Measurements of cognition (episodic memory, executive function), vascular function (flow-mediated dilation; FMD, arterial stiffness and blood pressure; BP), active and resting cerebral blood flow (CBF) using transcranial doppler ultrasound were taken at baseline and 12-weeks following daily consumption of 26 g freeze-dried WBB powder containing 260 mg anthocyanins (equivalent to 178 g fresh wild blueberries). Faecal samples were collected at both visits to measure changes in the gut microbiome using 16s rRNA sequencing. Blood and 24 h urine samples were also collected for the analysis of plasma and urinary (poly)phenol metabolites using LC-MS and authentic standards.

Analysis showed significant improvements in accuracy on the switch task and improved immediate word recall for the WBB group compared to placebo at 12 weeks. At a vascular level, FMD was improved and systolic 24 hour ambulatory BP decreased in the blueberry group compared with the placebo group after 12-weeks daily consumption. However, no changes in active or resting CBF were observed between groups. Finally, increased microbiome alpha diversity was found in the blueberry group 12 weeks post-consumption which correlated with plasma and urinary WBB (poly)phenols metabolites. These data suggest that daily consumption of wild blueberries may improve cognitive function and cardiovascular health in older adults, effects that may be mediated by changes in the gut microbiome.