The person who knows the most about this subject is Dayan Goodenowe, PhD. Some recent publications include:
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcell.2022.864842/full “Targeted Plasmalogen Supplementation: Effects on Blood Plasmalogens, Oxidative Stress Biomarkers, Cognition, and Mobility in Cognitively Impaired Persons”
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcell.2022.866156/full “Brain ethanolamine phospholipids, neuropathology and cognition: A comparative post-mortem analysis of structurally specific plasmalogen and phosphatidyl species”
A sample of links freely available at https://drgoodenowe.com/.
1. Presentations to professional groups. Have your mouse ready to click the pause button.
https://drgoodenowe.com/dr-goodenowe-presents-at-the-iagg2023-in-yokohama-japan/ “A rare children’s disease that may be the key to reversing neurological decline in aging”
Includes videos of a treatment’s effects on a child.
https://neomarkgroup.wistia.com/medias/0qln0wy93t “The most influential biomarkers for aging and disease”
Despite the title, a considerable number of studies were presented on prenatal, infant, and early childhood development. He misspoke a few times, so read the slides.
“Phenotype is reality. Genotype is possibility. Communications links between different fields are very poorly connected in science.
Peroxisomes are islands. They don’t have DNA like your mitochondria do. Peroxisomal transport issues are important things to understand.
All aging-related cross-sectional analyses are on the rate of decline. You’re declining from a previous well state. Age-matched controls are the most ridiculous thing to do.”
2. I’ll highlight the longest of several interviews because there was plenty of room to expand on points. Maybe the best detailed explanations came as responses to that interviewer challenging with contrasting AD, traumatic brain injury, and cholesterol paradigms. Its transcript is more accurate than a usual YouTube interpretation, but there are still mistakes such as “fossil lipid” vs. phospholipid.
https://www.betterhealthguy.com/episode186 “Plasmalogens with Dr. Dayan Goodenowe, PhD”
“Science is how do you push things to its failure, until you can’t fail it again. We’ve lost that. It’s become more hypothesis proving.
Plasmalogens levels go up for a different reason than people think. The reason why it peaks in our 40s and 50s is because we’ve been myelinating. The white matter of our brain is still increasing. It’s not because we’re making more plasmalogens. It’s because the lake, the reservoir, gets full. What you’re measuring in blood is overflow from the lake. The lower plasmalogens start trickling down in your blood, the bigger drain that’s occurring on that system.
Low plasmalogens don’t just predict dementia in the elderly population. It predicts the rate of decline of that dementia. It predicts the rate of death.
The biggest drivers of plasmalogen manufacturing and the biggest reasons why they decrease with age, or in other circumstances is two things. One, the failure to maintain a fasting state of the human body. The second one is muscle atrophy.
Amyloid has absolutely nothing to do with Alzheimer’s, or dementia. It’s just a bystander on the road watching an accident happen.
Age-related cognitive decline is clearly where plasmalogens have the greatest impact. You’re always going to have mixed pathologies in the brain.
Nutritional availability of plasmalogens is virtually non-existent. As soon as they hit the hydrochloric acid of your stomach, they’re gone. They don’t make it past the stomach, or the upper intestine.”
I came across Dr. Goodenowe’s work last month from clicking a comment on this blog that linked back to her blog. Always be curious.
Continued in Part 2.
Surface Your Real Self 
“Always be curious.” This is the best advice!
I’m so pleased that you followed up on Dr. Goodenowe and his plasmalogen research. It’s such a fascinating topic and it’s incredible seeing the connection between deficiency with dementia, MS, cancer, autism, systemic inflammation, and more. Thanks for the great write-up–there were a few studies I hadn’t seen before.
The physician that tested me for and introduced me to plasmalogens has a weekly blog/newsletter where he often talks about new research and theories based on yet unpublished discussion with Dr. Goodenowe. It’s layperson-friendly, but you might enjoy it: https://newsinnutrition.com/search?s=plasmalogen
Hi Esoterica! Thanks for the encouraging words and link.
Have you seen anything that gave details about reversing brain shrinkage as mentioned in “Your Brain Shrinks as You Age”? I couldn’t find anything published on Dr. Goodenowe’s website, although it’s been over a year or so since he started talking about its results.
I wouldn’t consider plasmalogen therapy as a panacea the same way it was noted in, for example, “How to Stop Heart Disease in Its Tracks” with “I’ve been on Prodrome Glia and Neuro (the two dominant forms of plasmalogen precursors, made from phosphatidylcholine) for over a year now. My CRP is now 0.3, below the 1.0 threshold.”
– Prodrome Neuro isn’t made from phosphatidylcholine.
– My high-specificity CRP in June 2021 was 0.24 after a year+ of eating a clinically relevant amount of microwaved broccoli sprouts every day. It may have even been that way in June 2020 after 10 weeks of eating broccoli sprouts, but the clinic’s medical professional ignored my specific written request for hsCRP, and did a regular CRP test, which came in < 1.0 because that's its threshold.
Neither Prodrome nor sulforaphane are panaceas. I'll go over more in Part 3, which will probably be an opinion piece rather than strictly studies. Currently investigating the disconnect between dietary plasmalogens research findings and Dr. Goodenowe's position of negligible effective bioavailability, which will form Part 2.
Most of my data has come from appointments with my physician. I audio record and go back to review. I trust him because is close to Goodenowe, but there may be intentional inaccuracies in what’s he’s shared with me or the notes I’ve taken. As for “Your Brain Shrinks as You Age” and some other articles on Dr. John Whitcombs blog, maybe theories are based on dialogue with other practitioners, observations in patients, etc. I have an appointment on Thursday, so I’ll ask him, but I suspect this was simply based on a n=1 experiment and has not yet been clinically replicated. I fully agree that plasmalogens are not a panacea, the way suggested, though I am curious to see further research as it seems promising. I’m very much looking forward to Parts 1 and 2!