What clinical trials have tested Tualang honey’s effects on cognition in humans?

1. The postmenopausal memory trial: Tualang honey versus hormone therapy

A randomized clinical investigation reported that 16 weeks of Tualang honey supplementation improved measures of immediate memory in healthy postmenopausal women, an effect described as comparable to that seen in a matched group receiving combined estrogen‑progestin therapy; the trial is cited in multiple reviews and summaries of Tualang honey clinical work (Menopause 2011 reference listed in PubMed and review articles) ^{[1] [2] [3]}. Reviews emphasize that this improvement was specific to immediate recall tasks and did not clearly extend to delayed recall or interference conditions in the same dataset ^[3].

2. The schizophrenia trial: short course, selective gains

A separate clinical study administering Tualang honey for eight weeks to patients with schizophrenia reported an improvement in total learning performance across domains specifically in immediate memory but no consistent gains in long‑term memory, leading authors and subsequent reviewers to label the result “promising” but preliminary ^{[5] [1] [2]}. The schizophrenia study is indexed on PubMed and summarized in systematic reviews as one of the few human trials addressing cognition directly ^{[1] [4]}.

3. What these trials share — and what they don’t

Both human trials targeted populations with hypothesized vulnerability to cognitive change (postmenopausal women and people with schizophrenia), used relatively short supplementation windows (8–16 weeks), and reported benefits mainly in immediate memory/learning domains rather than robust, generalized cognitive restoration; these features are highlighted across narrative and systematic reviews ^{[2] [3] [4]}. Reviews also note the small number of human studies and the tendency of new papers to re‑examine similar endpoints without standardizing dose, formulation, or outcome measures ^{[2] [4]}.

4. Mechanistic framing used by authors and reviewers

Authors and multiple reviews propose antioxidant, anti‑inflammatory and phytoestrogenic pathways as plausible mechanisms for the observed cognitive effects, connecting Tualang honey’s rich polyphenol and flavonoid content to reduced oxidative stress and improved hippocampal/prefrontal morphology seen in animal models ^{[6] [2] [3]}. These mechanistic claims are supported by extensive animal data showing hippocampal protection and behavioral benefits but are inferential for humans because direct mechanistic biomarkers were not comprehensively reported in the small clinical trials ^{[7] [8] [9]}.

5. Broader evidence landscape and limits of inference

Systematic reviews and recent overviews classify the human data as promising but limited: they explicitly say clinical evidence is sparse and call for larger, better‑controlled trials to establish dosing, replication, and generalizability beyond the two populations studied ^{[10] [4] [2]}. Several reviews repeatedly stress that much of the literature is preclinical (rodent and in vitro models) and that animal‑to‑human extrapolation remains tentative without standardized human trials ^{[11] [4]}.

6. Conflicts, commercial ties and research gaps to watch

Some clinical reports identify commercial product names and formulations (for example, Agro Mas in the postmenopausal study summary), and reviews warn of inconsistent reporting of honey source, standardization and dosing across studies — all factors that can obscure reproducibility and imply potential commercial or manufacturing agendas when not transparently reported ^{[1] [2] [4]}. Major gaps remain: few participant groups, short follow‑up, limited cognitive domains tested, and sparse biomarker or neuroimaging data to validate mechanisms in humans ^{[2] [11] [4]}.