Prevagen Does Not Provide Any Brain-Enhancing Benefits, Class Action Says

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Quincy Bioscience has been hit with another proposed class action by a consumer who claims the company’s Prevagen brain- and memory-enhancement supplement simply does not work as advertised.

The lawsuit out of Florida says that the defendant has for over a decade claimed Prevagen improves memory, supports healthy brain function, and can offer a sharper mind and clearer thinking. The ingredient to which these purported benefits are attributed is the protein apoaequorin, Prevagen’s only active ingredient, according to the case.

In truth, the lawsuit alleges, it is impossible for Prevagen to work as Quincy Bioscience represents. According to the complaint, apoaequorin is no more than a protein that, once ingested, “is completely and rapidly destroyed by the digestive system” before being transformed into common amino acids “no different than those derived from, say, baloney.”

The lawsuit adds that Prevagen is sold in 10 to 40 mg doses. Considering a consumer’s average daily diet contains roughly 75 grams of protein, the lawsuit says, a single dose of apoaequorin-based Prevagen accounts for just 0.013 percent to 0.053 percent of the protein an average person consumes daily. Such small amounts of protein can have “no measurable effect” on the brain, the case stresses. Further, the protein derivatives in the human body into which apoaequorin is digested are unable to cross the blood barrier, which means they never reach the brain to begin with, the lawsuit explains. 

Quincy Bioscience, according to the lawsuit, is aware that Prevagen does not provide any brain-enhancing benefits yet touts its efficacy by “hyping” what the case describes as an “unpublished, in-house study, called the ‘Madison Memory Study,’” which was performed by the company to test the supplement. The lawsuit notes that during a February 2019 hearing over whether a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and State of New York suit against Quincy Bioscience should be allowed to proceed, the court indicated that the Madison Memory Study “failed to show a statistically significant improvement in the experimental group over the placebo group as a whole.”

The lawsuit looks not only for compensation for consumers who bought Prevagen, but for Quincy Bioscience to correct the apparently false and misleading perception that the supplement improves overall brain health.