Brains With More Vitamin D Function Better - Neuroscience News

Summary: Older adults with cognitive decline who have higher levels of vitamin D in their brains had better cognitive function than their peers with lower levels of vitamin D.

Researchers at Tufts University have completed the first study examining levels of vitamin D in brain tissue, specifically in adults who suffered from varying rates of cognitive decline.

They found that members of this group with higher levels of vitamin D in their brains had better cognitive function.

 “Many studies have implicated dietary or nutritional factors in cognitive performance or function in older adults, including many studies of vitamin D, but all of them are based on either dietary intakes or blood measures of vitamin D,” said lead author Kyla Shea, a scientist on the Vitamin K Team and an associate professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts.

“We wanted to know if vitamin D is even present in the brain, and if it is, how those concentrations are linked to cognitive decline.”.

Researchers at Rush University assessed the cognitive function of the participants, older people with no signs of cognitive impairment, as they aged, and analyzed irregularities in their brain tissue after death.

In the Tufts study, researchers looked for vitamin D in four regions of the brain—two associated with changes linked to Alzheimer’s disease, one associated with forms of dementia linked to blood flow, and one region without any known associations with cognitive decline related to Alzheimer’s disease or vascular disease.

They found that vitamin D was indeed present in brain tissue, and high vitamin D levels in all four regions of the brain correlated with better cognitive function.

“We now know that vitamin D is present in reasonable amounts in human brains, and it seems to be correlated with less decline in cognitive function,” Shea says.

“But we need to do more research to identify the neuropathology that vitamin D is linked to in the brain before we start designing future interventions.”.

“Brain vitamin D forms, cognitive decline, and neuropathology in community-dwelling older adults” by Sarah Booth et al.

Brain vitamin D forms, cognitive decline, and neuropathology in community-dwelling older adults

Decedents of the Rush Memory and Aging Project (n = 290) had vitamin D concentrations measured in four brain regions

The main form of vitamin D in all brain regions measured was 25(OH)D3

Higher brain 25(OH)D3 concentrations were associated with better cognitive function prior to death