Scientists: Vitamin D reduces dementia risk by 40%

A group of doctors from Europe and Canada found that taking vitamin D reduces the risk of developing dementia by 40 percent among the elderly who are 70 years of age or older.
“Reducing the frequency or slowing the progression of dementia has become an important goal for humanity, given the fact that the number of people affected by it is constantly increasing,” said researcher Byron Kreese from the University of Exeter. The results of the study conducted by scientists showed that vitamin D can be an effective way to solve this problem, ”according to what was published by the Russian news agency “Tass”.
According to the World Health Organization, 55 million people in the world suffer from dementia, and one of the main causes is Alzheimer’s disease. which is detected in 60-70 percent of them. And that this disease causes the death of brain cells, which leads to a gradual decrease in the mental, behavioral and social skills of the patient, so that he forgets what he talked about a short time ago, or forgets even the events and relatives and their names, and he may be lost in a familiar place.
In this context, the researchers decided to find out how vitamin D, whose molecules contribute to the removal of protein “garbage” from brain cells, affects the possibility of dementia. For this purpose, they followed the case of more than 12,000 people over the age of seventy. A third of the study participants were taking vitamin D regularly, which allowed doctors to monitor its effect on brain conditions over the next 10 years, taking into account whether they carried the APOE4 mutation. It is a variant of the APOE gene that increases the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease many times over.
In the end, the follow-up showed that dementia developed in 2.7 thousand participants in the study 10 years after its start, and that 75 percent of them did not take the vitamin. Therefore, when all the side factors are taken into account, it is clear that taking vitamin D regularly reduces the risk of developing dementia by 40 percent.
According to the researchers, this was most evident among those who did not carry the APOE4 mutation. For this reason, Kreese and his scientific team believe that the intestines of those who carry the APOE4 mutation are more actively absorbing vitamin D from foods than others.