B Vitamin Cocktail Delays Alzheimer's Disease and Dementia

B Vitamin Cocktails Delays Alzhemer's Disease and Dementia

A cheap regimen of vitamins in use for decades is seen by scientists as a way to delay the start of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, a goal that prescription drugs have failed to achieve.

Drugmakers including Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., Pfizer Inc. (PFE) and Eli Lilly & Co. (LLY) have spent billions of dollars on ineffective therapies in a so-far fruitless effort to come up with an effective treatment for dementia and Alzheimer’s.

Now, in the latest of a steady drumbeat of research that suggests diet, exercise and socializing remain patients’ best hope, a study published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that vitamins B6 and B12 combined with folic acid slowed atrophy of grey matter in brain areas affected by Alzheimer’s disease.

Alzheimer’s disease and dementia mostly affect older people. As people live longer, the number afflicted by the conditions is growing. Delaying dementia with an inexpensive vitamin regimen may help stem the surge in cases, which the World Health Organization predicted would more than triple from 36 million worldwide in 2010 to 115 million in 2050, as well as the cost, estimated at $604 billion in 2010 by Alzheimer’s Disease International.

Vitamin Market

Vitamin makers and retailers such as Pfizer’s consumer health-care unit and GNC Holdings Inc. (GNC) in the U.S. and Reckitt Benckiser Group Plc and Holland & Barrett Holding Ltd. in Europe stand to benefit. The Nutrition Business Journal estimates the global market for vitamins, minerals and supplements was $30 billion in 2012 and forecasts sales will grow 3.6 percent by 2017.

In the PNAS study, researchers tracked 156 people ages 70 and older who had mild memory loss and high levels of a protein previously linked to dementia. Among people with elevated homocysteine, the study found that the amount of grey matter declined 5.2 percent in those taking a placebo, compared with 0.6 percent in those who took the vitamin cocktail. The supplements cost about 30 cents a day in pharmacies and health-food stores.

First Look

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration hasn’t cleared new drugs for memory loss conditions in a decade. Approved medicines such as Eisai Co.’s Aricept ease symptoms without slowing or curing dementia. A joint U.S.-European Union task force in 2011 found that all disease-modifying treatments for Alzheimer’s in the previous decade failed late-stage trials despite enormous financial and scientific efforts.

Since then at least four more experimental treatments have failed, but research continues. 

Shrinking Brains

Older people’s brains shrink about 0.5 percent a year from the age of 60, and faster in people with vitamin B12 deficiency, mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer’s disease. If that pace can be significantly slowed before full-blown Alzheimer’s develops, it may delay the disease’s progression so that older people can enjoy better lives until they die from another cause.

“If you delay the onset by five years, you can halve the number of people dying from it,” says Jess Smith, a research communications officer at the Alzheimer’s Society, a U.K. charity.

The Oxford group studied people in the Oxford, England, area who had mild cognitive impairment, also known as MCI, or some memory loss. One in six people over 70 have MCI and about half of those develop dementia within five years. Alzheimer’s accounts for 50 percent to 80 percent of all dementias, according to the Alzheimer’s Association.

Vitamin Cocktail

Study volunteers were given either a placebo or 0.5 milligrams of vitamin B12, 20 milligrams of vitamin B6 and 0.8 milligrams of folic acid. Their brains were scanned using magnetic-resonance imaging and blood levels of the protein homocysteine were measured at the start of the trial and two years later. The MRI scans compared how much grey matter was lost in brain regions most affected by Alzheimer’s disease.  Results very clearly showed that subjects taking the vitamin cocktail had significantly lower loss of grey matter.

Brain Atrophy

The research reinforces previous findings that supplements slowed brain atrophy and cognitive decline in the group.

Smith and his colleagues at Oxford reported in 2010 that the atrophy rate in patients’ whole brains was reduced about 30 percent in those taking the vitamins and 53 percent in those on the vitamins who also had elevated homocysteine. They published study results in 2012 of memory tests that found people on the vitamins who had high homocysteine were 69 percent likelier to correctly remember a list of 12 words.

Vitamin B12 is found in liver, fish and milk and folic acid in fruit and vegetables. Deficiency of folate and B vitamins is already linked to dementia. Researchers such as Smith are studying whether less-than-optimal levels of B vitamins and folic acid contribute to its development.