Pyritinol is a synthetic compound made of two vitamin B6 (pyridoxine) molecules joined together. It was studied as a drug for memory and thinking problems, mostly in Europe from the 1970s to the 1990s.
Also known as: pyrithioxine, pyritinol hydrochloride, pyritinol dihydrochloride, Encephabol.
There is no FDA-approved pyritinol product, so we do not list doses. The trials gave it by mouth for 12 weeks to adults with dementia (Fischhof 1992) and as a liquid for 6 months to newborns (Nair 2009).
Pyritinol is not FDA approved: we found no pyritinol product in Drugs@FDA. We also found no current US supplement label that names it.
What studies show: in a 12-week placebo-controlled trial in 156 older inpatients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's-type or stroke-related dementia, pyritinol did better than placebo on a global rating, a short thinking test and a rating of cognitive problems (Fischhof 1992). In 108 newborns with brain injury from lack of oxygen at birth, 6 months of pyritinol did not improve development scores at age 1 (Nair 2009). Most trials are from the 1970s to 1990s, and we found no recent large trials.
Safety: the abstracts read for this page do not report side effects in detail. The sources here do not describe drug interactions.
We could not find a single published half-life or time to peak for pyritinol that applies to a supplement dose, so we do not list one. There is no FDA label to check one against.
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