EuroPharma Says Its Curcumin Absorption Outperforms Meriva

According to EuroPharma, a recent study showed that its BCM-95 curcumin ingredient outperformed Indena’s (Milan) Meriva curcumin, as well as plain curcumin, in terms of absorption.

The company says the difference lies in BCM-95’s higher content of full-spectrum curcuminoids. It said it was inspired to do the study on the heels of a study published on Meriva in the Journal of Natural Products that reported Meriva to have a 29-fold absorption compared to standard curcumin, thanks to Meriva’s Phytosome technology.

EuroPharma says that Meriva’s curcumin phytosome is one part curcumin, two parts lecithin (phosphatidylcholine), and two parts cellulose, meaning that there is only 100 mg of actual curcumin in a 500-mg curcumin complex. By contrast, the company says, studies on BCM-95 have shown each 500-mg dose to have more than 450 mg of full-spectrum curcuminoids.

In the study comparing the two curcumin forms and plain curcumin, researchers measured the average increase of curcumin in the blood stream following each 1-mg dose of supplementation. It said that while BCM-95 resulted in a 0.34 increase in the bloodstream, measured as nanograms/gram, Meriva had only a 0.15 ng/g increase and plain curcumin had a mere 0.04 ng/g increase.

“There is so much confusion out there regarding curcumin,” stated Ajay Goel, PhD, director of epigenetics and cancer prevention at the Gastrointestinal Research Center at Baylor University Medical Center (Dallas), in a press statement on behalf of EuroPharma. “People may be unaware that plain curcumin is hard to absorb. The focus of researchers has been to discover better strategies to enhance curcumin absorption that would also allow longer retention times and higher therapeutic levels of sustained curcumin in the blood. The consequence of this mad race to discover the best curcumin preparation available in the marketplace has led to misleading marketing claims comparing curcumin absorption to turmeric, in some instances, and fuzzy math and statistics in interpreting studies on curcumin special absorption systems. The two most important measures that support scientific logic remain-what levels of full-spectrum of curcuminoids can be detected in the blood, and how long do the curcuminoids remain the blood stream within the therapeutic range.”

Goel added, “In my research, I found that the most potent form of curcumin is one in which the full family of curcuminoids are represented in their natural arrangement, and trying to use a single curcuminoid away from the family may be much less effective.”