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65th Annual Meeting of the German Association for Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology (GMDS), Meeting of the Central European Network (CEN: German Region, Austro-Swiss Region and Polish Region) of the International Biometric Society (IBS)

06.09. - 09.09.2020, Berlin (online conference)

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Moderating effects of serum vitamin D on brain structure

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  • Sarah Bonk - Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Medicine Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany
  • Jan Terock - Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, HELIOS Klinikum Stralsund, Stralsund, Germany
  • Sandra Van der Auwera - Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Medicine Greifswald, Greifswald, GermanyGerman Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases DZNE, Site Rostock/ Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany
  • Stefan Frenzel - Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Medicine Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany
  • Katharina Wittfeld - German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases DZNE, Site Rostock/ Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany
  • Norbert Hosten - 3Department of Diagnostic Radiology and Neuroradiology, University Medicine Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany
  • Matthias Nauck - Institute of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine, University Medicine Greifswald, Greifswald, GermanyDZHK (German Centre for Cardiovascular Research), Partner Site Greifswald, University Medicine Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany
  • Henry Völzke - DZHK (German Centre for Cardiovascular Research), Partner Site Greifswald, University Medicine Greifswald, Greifswald, GermanyInstitute for Community Medicine, University Medicine Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany
  • Hans Grabe - Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Medicine Greifswald, Greifswald, GermanyGerman Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases DZNE, Site Rostock/ Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany

Deutsche Gesellschaft für Medizinische Informatik, Biometrie und Epidemiologie. 65th Annual Meeting of the German Association for Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology (GMDS), Meeting of the Central European Network (CEN: German Region, Austro-Swiss Region and Polish Region) of the International Biometric Society (IBS). Berlin, 06.-09.09.2020. Düsseldorf: German Medical Science GMS Publishing House; 2021. DocAbstr. 444

doi: 10.3205/20gmds362, urn:nbn:de:0183-20gmds3624

Published: February 26, 2021

© 2021 Bonk et al.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. See license information at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Outline

Text

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.

Outline

References

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Karakis I, Pase MP, Beiser A, Booth SL, Jacques PF, Rogers G, DeCarli C, Vasan RS, Wang TJ, Himali JJ, Annweiler C, Seshadri S. Association of Serum Vitamin D with the Risk of Incident Dementia and Subclinical Indices of Brain Aging: The Framingham Heart Study. J Alzheimers Dis. 2016;51(2):451-61. DOI: 10.3233/JAD-150991 External link
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