Vitamin E may aid those with mild to moderate Alzheimer's
Karen Weintraub
USATODAY
December 31, 2013
Vitamin E is far from an Alzheimer's cure, but a new study finds it allowed trial participants to get less help from caregivers and therefore retain more independence longer.
Taking high doses of vitamin E appears to help people in all stages of Alzheimer's disease, a new study suggests.
Research a decade ago showed that vitamin E was helpful in late-stage Alzheimer's disease. Now a study published Tuesday by the Journal of the American Medical Association finds the benefits extend to people with mild to moderate forms of the disease.
"This looks very promising," said lead researcher Mary Sano, director of the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at the James J. Peters VA Medical Center, and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, both in New York City.
Vitamin E is far from a cure, only somewhat improving functional activities such as planning and organizing, the study found. But it did allow trial participants, who were studied for an average of more than two years, to get less help from caregivers and therefore retain more independence longer.
"It's not something where you must do this, it's going to make all the difference," said Rachelle Doody, director of the Alzheimer's Disease and Memory Disorders Center at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. But Doody, who was not involved in the current study, said she thinks it's worthwhile for most Alzheimer's patients, in consultation with their doctor, to take 2,000 IU of vitamin E per day.
That amount far exceeds the government's recommended dose for healthy adults, which is 22.4 IU or 15 mg per day. There is no indication that high doses of vitamin E help healthy adults, and research shows an increased risk of death with such high doses, particularly for people with congestive heart failure.
That's why Heather Snyder, Director of Medical & Scientific Relations at the Alzheimer's Association, thinks that people with mild to moderate Alzheimer's should wait for more research before jumping to add vitamin E to their pill box.
The new study looked at patients in the Veteran's Affairs system, so they were virtually all male. It's not yet clear, Snyder said, that the benefits of vitamin E will be true for women as well.
It's also unclear why high doses of vitamin E would help people with Alzheimer's, Snyder said, so the Alzheimer's Association is funding research to uncover a possible mechanism.
Vitamin E is a so-called antioxidant, meaning it combats the damage that oxygen does to cells. It also stabilizes cell membranes. Perhaps, Doody said, at very high doses, enough vitamin E reaches the brain to protect against the brain cell death that characterizes Alzheimer's.
Doody, who has done her own research into Alzheimer's and vitamin E, believes the vitamin is safe and life-extending for people with the memory disease.
The new study also examined a drug called memantine, which is already used to treat advanced Alzheimer's, but found no benefit to mild-to-moderate Alzheimer's patients from the drug alone or in connection with high doses of vitamin E.
All of the 600 patients in the trial were also prescribed the standard-of-care drugs, called cholinesterase inhibitors, although Sano said she thinks vitamin E will also benefit patients who are not taking those drugs.
Showing posts with label vitamins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vitamins. Show all posts
Saturday, January 4, 2014
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Can vitamins help boost your memory?
Can vitamins help boost your memory?
By Genevra Pittman
Jul 28, 2011
(Reuters Health)
Adults who took vitamin and mineral supplements for almost a decade performed better on one type of memory test than those who didn't take the supplements, according to a new study from France.
The researchers say the findings suggest that getting enough nutrients could aid thinking and memory skills as people get older. But further studies are needed to confirm the results, they add.
The effect was "nothing wild that you'd say, 'Everybody should take these,'" said Geraldine McNeill, a nutritionist at the University of Aberdeen in the UK.
But McNeill, who wasn't involved in the new study, said some people -- especially those who are deficient in vitamins and minerals -- might get a memory benefit from boosting the nutrients in their diet.
Emmanuelle Kesse-Guyot of the University of Paris XIII in France and colleagues write that the link between a higher intake of some nutrients and thinking and memory skills has been shown before in so-called observational studies. But those studies can't get at a cause-and-effect relationship.
"The question is, does the cognitive performance depend on the diet, or does the diet depend on the cognitive performance?" McNeill told Reuters Health. It's possible that people who have better thinking and memory skills might pay closer attention to what they're eating, she explained.
To try to get a clearer picture of the association, Kesse-Guyot and her colleagues conducted a study of close to 4,500 French men and women.
In 1994, when the study participants were 45 to 60 years old, researchers split them randomly into two groups. Half of them took a daily supplement that included vitamins C and E, selenium, zinc, and beta-carotene for eight years. The others took a nutrient-free placebo pill each day.
None of the participants knew whether they were taking the vitamin or the sham pills.
When the eight years were up, researchers stopped giving participants their assigned pills, and they could choose on their own whether or not to take vitamin supplements.
Six years after that, the investigators brought them back to the lab for a round of memory tests.
The tests included word and number problems to measure different types of memory and "mental flexibility."
While the supplement and placebo groups performed similarly on most tests, the nutrient-boosted participants beat their peers on one test of long-term memory in which participants had to recall words in different categories.
"Our results have to be considered carefully," the authors wrote in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Because they did several tests, it's more likely that the one difference they found was due to chance.
Still, they added, the "findings support a beneficial effect of a well-balanced intake of antioxidant nutrients at nutritional doses for maintaining cognitive performance, especially verbal memory."
McNeill said that most people could probably get the vitamin and nutrient doses used in the study through tweaks in their diet -- for example, drinking fruit juice to get Vitamin C and using plant oil, which is a good source of Vitamin E.
"Taking supplements for me is a last resort," she said.
Barbara Shukitt-Hale, a nutrition researcher at Tufts University in Boston, said it's important for people to know that boosting brainpower requires more than just taking a vitamin pill every day.
"Vitamins and minerals are important for memory, but they're not the only thing that's important," she told Reuters Health. "The most important thing is eating a healthy diet, being active, and keeping your brain sharp."
By Genevra Pittman
Jul 28, 2011
(Reuters Health)
Adults who took vitamin and mineral supplements for almost a decade performed better on one type of memory test than those who didn't take the supplements, according to a new study from France.
The researchers say the findings suggest that getting enough nutrients could aid thinking and memory skills as people get older. But further studies are needed to confirm the results, they add.
The effect was "nothing wild that you'd say, 'Everybody should take these,'" said Geraldine McNeill, a nutritionist at the University of Aberdeen in the UK.
But McNeill, who wasn't involved in the new study, said some people -- especially those who are deficient in vitamins and minerals -- might get a memory benefit from boosting the nutrients in their diet.
Emmanuelle Kesse-Guyot of the University of Paris XIII in France and colleagues write that the link between a higher intake of some nutrients and thinking and memory skills has been shown before in so-called observational studies. But those studies can't get at a cause-and-effect relationship.
"The question is, does the cognitive performance depend on the diet, or does the diet depend on the cognitive performance?" McNeill told Reuters Health. It's possible that people who have better thinking and memory skills might pay closer attention to what they're eating, she explained.
To try to get a clearer picture of the association, Kesse-Guyot and her colleagues conducted a study of close to 4,500 French men and women.
In 1994, when the study participants were 45 to 60 years old, researchers split them randomly into two groups. Half of them took a daily supplement that included vitamins C and E, selenium, zinc, and beta-carotene for eight years. The others took a nutrient-free placebo pill each day.
None of the participants knew whether they were taking the vitamin or the sham pills.
When the eight years were up, researchers stopped giving participants their assigned pills, and they could choose on their own whether or not to take vitamin supplements.
Six years after that, the investigators brought them back to the lab for a round of memory tests.
The tests included word and number problems to measure different types of memory and "mental flexibility."
While the supplement and placebo groups performed similarly on most tests, the nutrient-boosted participants beat their peers on one test of long-term memory in which participants had to recall words in different categories.
"Our results have to be considered carefully," the authors wrote in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Because they did several tests, it's more likely that the one difference they found was due to chance.
Still, they added, the "findings support a beneficial effect of a well-balanced intake of antioxidant nutrients at nutritional doses for maintaining cognitive performance, especially verbal memory."
McNeill said that most people could probably get the vitamin and nutrient doses used in the study through tweaks in their diet -- for example, drinking fruit juice to get Vitamin C and using plant oil, which is a good source of Vitamin E.
"Taking supplements for me is a last resort," she said.
Barbara Shukitt-Hale, a nutrition researcher at Tufts University in Boston, said it's important for people to know that boosting brainpower requires more than just taking a vitamin pill every day.
"Vitamins and minerals are important for memory, but they're not the only thing that's important," she told Reuters Health. "The most important thing is eating a healthy diet, being active, and keeping your brain sharp."
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