Just Vitamins

12 Dec 2008 PEOPLE with low levels of vitamin D are more likely to have Parkinson’s disease, according to new research.

Scientists from Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, America, tested 300 patients – a third with Parkinson’s disease, a third with Alzheimer’s and a third who were healthy.

They found that 23 per cent of the group with Parkinson’s disease were deficient in vitamin D, compared with 16 per cent of the group with Alzheimer’s and 10 per cent of the healthy group.

The scientists admit they are not sure if the deficiency causes the condition or is a result of it. One possible explanation is that people with Parkinson’s disease are more likely to stay indoors – away from the sunshine which helps the body to produce the vitamin.

However all the patients in the study were from the South West of America, which has a sunny climate.

Parkinson’s disease is a progressive neurological condition affecting movements such as walking, talking and writing.

Around 120,000 people have the condition in the UK. Symptoms usually first appear when patients are over 50 and men are slightly more likely to develop the condition than women.

Other studies have shown that the part of the brain most affected by the condition – the substantia nigra – is highly sensitive to vitamin D, suggesting that it may be important in maintaining the health of this area.

‘We found that vitamin D insufficiency may have a unique association with Parkinson’s, which is intriguing and warrants further investigation,’ says Dr Marian Evatt, one of the researchers who worked on the latest study, which was published in the journal Archives of Neurology.

Further studies are now planned to investigate why vitamin D levels vary in the different groups tested and to study the role of vitamin D in the development of Parkinson’s disease.



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