Vitamin B12 may help protect against Alzheimer's disease
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The study suggests that seniors with more of the active part of the vitamin in their blood have a lower risk of developing the disease, which eats away at the minds of one in eight Americans aged 65 and older, according to the Alzheimer's Association.
However, the findings don't necessarily mean that taking B vitamin supplements will stave off mental decline.
Just last summer, for instance, a pair of studies deflated long-held hopes that B vitamins -- like B12 and folic acid -- would help patients who had suffered strokes or heart attack.
"More research is needed before we can get a conclusion on the role of vitamin B12 supplements on neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease," said Dr. Babak Hooshmand from Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, whose findings appear in the journalNeurology.
But he added that many elderly people suffer from B12 deficiency, so the results could turn out to be important.
"Our findings indicate that vitamin B12 and related metabolites may have an important role in Alzheimer's disease," Hooshmand wrote in an email.
The researchers took blood samples from 271 Finnish seniors without dementia. At a second examination about seven years later, they found 17 (6%) had developed Alzheimer's.
Those who did had higher levels of holotranscobalamin -- the active portion of vitamin B12 -- and lower levels of homocysteine, an amino acid tied to mental decline, stroke and heart disease. Folic acid was not linked to Alzheimer's. Read more: canada.com
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