THURSDAY, April 25, 2002 (HealthDayNews) -- Remembering to take your vitamins as you get older could result in remembering a whole lot more.
That's the conclusion of a study suggesting that correcting deficiencies in nutrients such as vitamin B12 and folic acid in the elderly could significantly reduce the scope of memory loss -- a problem affecting some 750,000 Americans.
Reporting in the new issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, a group of Scottish and British researchers say the vitamins may be key to controlling levels of homocysteine, a natural chemical compound linked not only to memory loss but also heart disease.
While it has been long known that homocysteine levels are frequently elevated in patients with Alzheimer's disease, this is one of the first studies to suggest these same elevations could also occur in older adults who suffer age-related cognitive declines, including memory loss.
"This study takes the initial theory one step further. It gives us some new information, and builds on the important idea that certain nutrients can play a significant role in treating cognitive impairment in the elderly
and that memory loss doesn't have to automatically come with aging," says Dr. Barry Reisberg, a professor of psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine.
As the study authors explain, when homocysteine levels rise, the result is a number of biochemical changes that can be highly toxic to the blood vessels within the brain. The elevated levels can also have a direct effect on brain cells themselves, knocking out communication between nerve fibers that is necessary for peak cognitive function, such as memory.
However, when vitamin B12 and folic acid are in good supply, they appear to protect against those biochemical changes. Let those nutrient levels fall too low, though, and the protection is lost -- along with memory, the researchers say.
While Reisberg says correcting the nutrient deficiency might not help retrieve the part of the memory that is gone, it can help stave off further losses.
"The earlier you can catch the nutrient deficiency and correct it, the better off you are, in terms of preserving future cognitive function in certain individuals," Reisberg says.
One of the reasons nutrient loss is so prominent in the elderly is poor eating habits: Many older people don't eat as well or as much as they should.
Also, as people age, they also lose some of their ability to absorb nutrients from the food they do eat.
So, Reisberg says, when nutrient intake goes down and what people do eat is less readily absorbed, it's easy to see how a severe vitamin deficiency can occur, sometimes rather quickly.
The just-published study involved 331 men and women, all of whom were part of the Scottish Mental Surveys of 1932 and 1947. These were intelligence tests that were conducted on schoolchildren in Scotland.
The new study, based on research that took place between 1997 and 1999, involved two groups of people from the original Scottish studies. The first group was born in 1921; the second group was born in 1936.
The researchers used standard measures to assess the cognitive status of the men and women. They tested such things as nonverbal intelligence, how quickly the subjects could process information, how easily they could recognize certain patterns, and their overall ability to remember.
They also took blood samples from all the patients, measuring concentrations of homocysteine, folic acid and B12.
The researchers then compared the cognitive scores of each member of the groups with blood levels of all three of the compounds.
Here's what they found:
The older group, born in 1921, had increased levels of homocysteine and lower blood levels of both folic acid and vitamin B12, all of which correlated with lower scores on cognitive tests. This remained true even after the researchers accounted for differences in childhood IQ, which can play a role in cognitive decline.
However, the researchers found that those men and women who had higher levels of both nutrients in their bloodstream scored higher on four of the six tests, including those involving memory.
Meanwhile, in the younger group, those born in 1936, the nutrients had a lesser effect. The study authors speculate that members of the older group may have had a greater nutrient deficiency in their tissues as well as the blood, which, in turn, could be responsible for the additional toxic effects on the brain.
Reisberg says the findings can go a long way in helping to map out treatment strategies for the elderly.
"It's helping to lay the groundwork for the formal development of nutritional strategies aimed at delaying or even preventing cognitive decline in the elderly," Reisberg says.
He adds he has prescribed concentrated nutrient therapy for patients with memory loss for more than a decade, with excellent results.
What To Do: For more information on memory loss, visit The American Geriatrics Society. To learn more about the health powers of nutrients, check the National Institutes of Health for information on vitamin B12 and folic acid.
