Dementia risk & vitamin D deficiency link confirmed

11 August, 2014

By Staff Writer
Natural Health News

Natural Health News — Vitamin D deficiency is associated with a substantially increased risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease in older people, according to the most robust study of its kind ever conducted.

An international team, led by Dr David Llewellyn at the University of Exeter Medical School, found that study participants who were severely Vitamin D deficient were more than twice as likely to develop dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

The study was part-funded by the Alzheimer’s Association, and is published in Neurology. It looked at 1,658 adults aged 65 and over, who were able to walk unaided and were free from dementia, cardiovascular disease and stroke at the start of the study. The participants were then followed for six years to investigate who went on to develop Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia.

The team studied elderly Americans who took part in the larger Cardiovascular Health Study. They discovered that adults in the study who were moderately deficient in vitamin D had a 53% increased risk of developing dementia of any kind. That risk increased to 125% in those who were severely deficient.

Similar results were recorded for Alzheimer’s disease, with the moderately deficient group 69% more likely to develop this type of dementia, jumping to a 122% increased risk for those severely deficient.

The study also found evidence that there is a threshold level of Vitamin D circulating in the bloodstream below which the risk of developing dementia and Alzheimer’s disease increases. The team had previously hypothesized that this might lie in the region of 25-50 nmol/L, and their new findings confirm that vitamin D levels above 50 nmol/L are most strongly associated with good brain health.

Public health implications

Dr Llewellyn said: “We expected to find an association between low Vitamin D levels and the risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, but the results were surprising – we actually found that the association was twice as strong as we anticipated.

Dementia is one of the greatest challenges of our time, with 44 million cases worldwide – a number expected to triple by 2050 as a result of rapid population ageing. A billion people worldwide are thought to have low vitamin D levels and many older adults may experience poorer health as a result.

Previous research established that people with low vitamin D levels are more likely to go on to experience cognitive problems, but this study confirms that this translates into a substantial increase in the risk of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

Vitamin D comes from three main sources – exposure of skin to sunlight, foods such as oily fish, and supplements. Older people’s skin can be less efficient at converting sunlight into Vitamin D, making them more likely to be deficient and reliant on other sources. In many countries the amount of UVB radiation in winter is too low to allow vitamin D production.

In general we should be aiming to get 15 minutes of sun exposure (without suncream) per day to help keep vitamin D levels topped up.

Dr Llewellyn adds: “Clinical trials are now needed to establish whether eating foods such as oily fish or taking vitamin D supplements can delay or even prevent the onset of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia…our findings are very encouraging, and even if a small number of people could benefit, this would have enormous public health implications given the devastating and costly nature of dementia.”