LONDON, Feb. 4 (UPI) -- A Korean study suggests a lack of a water-soluble vitamin B known as folate deficiency triples the risk of dementia among elderly people.
Researchers at Chonnam National University Medical School in Kwangju, South Korea, tracked the development of dementia in 518 people from 2001 to 2003. All participants were over the age of 65 and lived in one rural and one urban area in the south of the country, the British Medical Journal said Monday in a news release.
At the start of the two-year period, almost one in five people had high levels of homocysteine, 17 percent had low vitamin B12 levels and 3.5 percent were deficient in folate --a water-soluble B vitamin that occurs naturally in food. By the end of the study, 45 people had developed dementia.
The report, published online in the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, said people who were folate deficient at the beginning of the study were almost 3.5 times more likely to develop dementia.
The authors suggest that changes in micronutrients could be linked with the other typical signs that precede dementia, including weight loss and low blood pressure.
