Alzheimer’s leaves its mark decades before showing its face:; keeping vitamin D at bay is already a promising shield

Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia remain one of the most complex medical puzzles of our era, standing out above all for the absence of treatments that completely stop the disease or even reverse it. But science continues to advance and has now focused on a preventive factor that could be in our hands from a young age: vitamin D.

It keeps moving forward. The main study that has sparked interest was published at the beginning of this month of April in the magazine Neurology. And the objective of this was none other than to shed light on how our brain behaves decades before the classic symptoms of dementia appear.

To get here, a total of 793 participants from the renowned Framingham Heart Study with an average age of 39 years were monitored. From here, the serum vitamin D of the patients began to be measured between 2002 and 2005, and then, at the age of 16, they underwent different scans to check the state of the brain.

What was seen. In conclusion, the study pointed out that maintaining higher levels of vitamin D, greater than 30 nanograms per mL, during the ages of 30 to 40 is associated with less subsequent accumulation of the tau protein in the brain.

Because it matters. The relevance of this discovery is crucial and to understand it, you just have to know that Alzheimer’s occurs because two factors mainly come together:

• Beta-amyloid protein plaques, which accumulate outside neurons.
• Neurofibrillary tangles of tau protein, which form within the brain cells themselves and are closely linked to neuronal death and cognitive decline.

In this way, the effort of science right now is focused above all on blocking the formation of beta-amyloid plaques around neurons or preventing the tau protein from accumulating in our neurons. Although it is something really complicated.

There is a nuance. Interestingly, the study found no association between midlife vitamin D levels and beta-amyloid accumulation. The protective effect is limited exclusively to the tau protein, especially in the brain regions where Alzheimer’s usually strikes its first blows.

This is good news, as it narrows down the biological mechanisms involved and suggests that vitamin D could play a specific role in the pathways that regulate how tau is produced or eliminated over the years.

There is small print. As they warn in the press release itself, this is a simple observational study. This means that it is true that people with higher vitamin D in middle age accumulated less tau protein, but the study cannot categorically state that vitamin D destroys tau protein on its own.

Furthermore, the authors of the study themselves are categorical: this finding is not a medical prescription. There is no current evidence to justify that massively supplementing with vitamin D pills at age 40 will protect the brain against dementia. This simply paves the way for future research to truly test this relationship in a clinical trial and lead to new treatments.

Images | catalyststuff freepik

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