Vitamin B Alzheimer’s Study Reveals New Facts
By: A study published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences insist that Vitamin B has been successful in slowing the development of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
According to this research, elderly people with increased risk of dementia who were given high doses of the vitamin experienced lower homocysteine, which directly reduces gray matter atrophy.
Taking folic acid combined with vitamins B6 and B12 regularly can slow the atrophy of gray matter in the areas throughout the brain affected by Alzheimer’s by up to seven times.
Taking this combination of vitamins will not reverse the already occurring decline. However, it will delay the disease from beginning.
“It’s the first and only disease-modifying treatment that’s worked,” A. David Smith, professor emeritus of pharmacology at Oxford University and senior author on the study, told Bloomberg. “We have proved the concept that you can modify the disease.”
“It’s a big effect, much bigger than we would have dreamt of. I find the specificity of this staggering. We never dreamt it would be so specific.”
Although wider studies are needed to confirm the findings, pharmaceutical companies, who have spent billions on so-far ineffective therapies — won’t likely want to fund the research.
“The pharmaceutical companies aren’t going to make any money on this and the supplement companies aren’t going to have enough money to do it,” Joshua Miller, a professor of nutritional sciences at Rutgers University, said. “This would have to be government-funded. I’m just not sure the climate is right for it now.”
