Article
Moderating effects of serum vitamin D on brain structure
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Published: | February 26, 2021 |
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Background: Vitamin D deficiency is common in the German population and is known to affect a wide range of pathways in human metabolism. As an example, previous studies found a link between Alzheimer's disease and modifications of brain structures [1], [2]. Motivated by these studies, we here investigate this association in the second cohort of the “Study of Health in Pomerania” (SHIP-TREND-0) study [3]. Head MRI and 25(OH)D serum values were collected from N=1899 subjects. The brain data is characterized by hippocamus volumina and brain structure-based scores for Alzheimer's disease and brain age.
Methods: We study the influence of vitamin D on Brain Age score, Alzheimer's Disease score and hippocampus volumina using regression models. The MRI analysis has been done using FreeSurfer. The data is adjusted for various confounders such as age, sex, season, intracranial volume, alcohol, diabetes.
Results: We found a significant association between vitamin D deficiency and an increased brain age score. An association between vitamin D deficiency and reduced hippocampus volumina and increased Alzheimer's score was not significant.
Conclusion: The association of vitamin D levels with the brain age might offer a strategy to positively influence the brain age by providing vitamin D supplementation. However, this needs to be addressed in clinical trials.
HJG has received travel grants and speakers honoraria from Fresenius Medical Care, Neuraxpharm and Janssen Cilag as well as research funding from Fresenius Medical Care. All other authors report no financial relationships with commercial interests.
The authors declare that a positive ethics committee vote has been obtained.
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