New Zealand company Ārepa makes new health claims and repackages products to overcome compliance challenges

This comes after Alphagen NZ Ltd, the company that owns Ārepa, received a notice from the Ministry of Primary Industries (MPI) in late 2023 regarding the product’s health claims and labelling.

Since then, Ārepa has been working closely with MPI to achieve “full compliance” with the Australia and New Zealand Food Standards Code.

“We encountered obstacles with MPI regarding how much we could talk about our published research on our formula or ingredients on our website and packaging. As a rapidly growing innovative company, we learned about the paths to defensible health claims.

“We are directing our future line of clinical trials to more closely replicate known effects to be considered primary (rather than secondary) outcomes and to increase sample size to be able to make health claims in multiple markets and within regulatory frameworks” Angus Brown, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Ārepa, said NutraIngredients-Asia.

The company currently submits multiple healthcare applications under the preferred systematic review justification process.

Specifically, it has submitted seven health claims to Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) after completing its scientific dossier. Once confirmed by MPI, this will allow Ārepa to make scientifically supported health claims about L-theanine in its products.

“We started with L-theanine because there is a lot of information available now. We will also continue to substantiate the health claims for our formula and the unique ingredient Neuroberry as the research we conduct progresses to publication.

“As we have done over the past four years, we will continue to publish more research on our formula and ingredients, faster than most of our competitors in the Asia Pacific region, and share this information through our communications platforms and regular marketing activities. “We have many achievements that will set us apart internationally in the area of brain health and performance.”

Brown says the packaging for Ārepa’s Brain Drinks and Brain Powder has been updated to receive MPI approval. The products are expected to hit shelves within the next six months.

Neuroprotective effects in cyclists

To date, two studies have been published on Ārepa, both funded by the New Zealand High-Value Nutrition (HVN) National Science Challenge program.

The first study examined how polyphenol supplementation could affect brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) levels in male cyclists exposed to polluted air during exercise.

BDNF is crucial for the growth and survival of neurons, as well as cognitive processes such as learning and memory. While exercise is known to increase BDNF levels, exercise in polluted air has been shown to suppress BDNF secretion.

In this double-blind, placebo-controlled study, 10 participants were randomly assigned to consume polyphenols (POLY) or placebo (PL) for seven days.

POLY supplement is a formula developed by Ᾱrepa, consisting of freeze-dried blackcurrant from New Zealand, L-theanine and pine bark extract. It is prescribed at a relative dose of 4.3 mg/kg anthocyanins.

After seven days of intervention, participants completed an exercise protocol—gradually increasing exercise intensity over 25 minutes, followed by 4 km of maximal cycling in ambient air. This was followed by two exercise tests in an ozone-polluted environment (0.25 ppm).

Serum BDNF levels were found to increase in both POLY (35%) and PL (29%) groups after exercise in ozone-polluted environment. Significantly, significantly higher BDNF levels (p = 0.013) were observed in the POLY group compared to the PL group.

“The results indicate that exercise combined with polyphenol supplementation increases BDNF levels in healthy cyclists exercising in poor air quality. While participants’ cognitive performance did not deteriorate after exercise, the lack of improvement suggests a potential negative impact of ozone on cognitive domains assessing attention and executive function,” written by the authors.

Dr Lillian Morton, a University of Auckland researcher who led the study, said future studies would need larger samples to verify the findings.

“It is worth investigating the potential of exercise in combination with Neuroberry or other anthocyanin-rich fruits in ambient air conditions, especially in populations at risk for cognitive decline” she added.

The Effect of Flavonoid Supplementation

A more recent study evaluated the effects of Ārepa on stress response, cognitive performance, mood, and gut microbiome.

A total of 38 healthy adult women were randomly assigned to consume either a “flavonoid-rich blackcurrant drink” (FBB) or a placebo drink daily for four weeks.

One key finding is the improvement in cognitive performance following the intervention—the FBB group showed a 33% improvement (P < .001) in letter search scores, a measure of working memory, whereas the placebo group showed no change (P = .331).

The results are consistent with previous reports describing cognitive benefits of supplementing 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 the improvements in the letter recall task relate to working memory function, this cannot be isolated from the attention and executive functions that are necessary to perform tasks in a multitasking paradigm. Regardless, it is promising to see performance benefits in healthy, younger populations, a critical time for optimizing brain health and preventing disease,” the authors said.

Furthermore, although FBB supplementation did not alter the composition or diversity of the gut microbiome, participants who showed greater improvement in cognitive responses after FBB supplementation had a greater relative abundance Bifidobacterium spp.at the beginning.

This indicates a role for the gut microbiome in mediating the benefits of flavonoid-rich intervention.

“Our study adds to the growing body of evidence that flavonoids are a credible preventive strategy for treating related brain and mental health disorders, but the observed improvements in secondary outcomes need to be confirmed in larger trials with a longer intervention period.

“Further studies are needed to understand whether improved intervention effects might be observed with a more targeted approach of gut microbiome profiling at baseline or perhaps with concomitant probiotic supplementation.”