Vitamin D can ward off Alzheimer's in women: studies

Vitamin D may be a vital component for the cognitive health of women as they age, found two new studies appearing in the 'Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences'.

Higher vitamin D dietary intake is associated with a lower risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, according to research conducted by a team led by Cedric Annweiler at the Angers University Hospital in France.

Annweiler team's findings were based on data from 498 community-dwelling women who participated in the Toulouse cohort of the Epidemiology of Osteoporosis study.

Among this population, women who developed Alzheimer's disease had lower baseline vitamin D intakes (an average of 50.3 micrograms per week) than those who developed other dementias (an average of 63.6 micrograms per week) or no dementia at all (an average of 59.0 micrograms per week).

Similarly, investigators led by Yelena Slinin at the VA Medical Center in Minneapolis found that low vitamin D levels among older women are associated with higher odds of global cognitive impairment and a higher risk of global cognitive decline.

Slinin's group based its analysis on 6,257 community-dwelling older women who had vitamin D levels measured during the Study of Osteopathic Fractures and whose cognitive function was tested, researchers said in a statement.

Very low levels of vitamin D (less than 10 nanograms per millilitre of blood serum) among older women were associated with higher odds of global cognitive impairment at baseline, and low vitamin D levels (less than 20 nanograms per millilitre) among cognitively-impaired women were associated with a higher risk of incident global cognitive decline.