Lower levels of sunshine vitamin may lead to Parkinson's

United States, October 14:Researchers from Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, United States, have found that elderly Parkinson patients have particularly low level of vitamin D, also known as “sunshine vitamin”, as compared to the healthy individuals of the same age.

Lead author of the study, Marian Evatt, MD, assistant professor of neurology at Emory and colleagues examined the vitamin D levels in 100 Parkinson's disease patients, 100 with Alzheimer's disease and 100 healthy adults of the same age as the Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s patients.

They found that decreased blood levels of the vitamin were more common in people with Parkinson's than healthy elderly people. 55 percent of people suffering from Parkinson’s have had lower levels of vitamin D, as compared to 36 percent of healthy elderly people and 41 percent of patients with Alzheimer's disease.

The researchers wrote, "Significantly more patients with Parkinson's disease [55 percent] had insufficient vitamin D than did controls [36 percent] or patients with Alzheimer's disease [41 percent]."

However, the scientists are still unclear whether the vitamin deficiency is a cause or the result of having a neurological disease, Parkinson’s.

Dr. Marian Evatt, said, "We found that vitamin D insufficiency may have a unique association with Parkinson's, which is intriguing and warrants further investigation."

The researchers are now conducting a pilot study in which the Parkinson patients are being treated with vitamin D.

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a progressive, degenerative neurological condition that affects the control of body movements. The most common symptoms include tremor, rigidity, slowness and impaired movement as nerve cells in the brain become affected by the disease.

At present, there is no cure for the disease but it can be managed and people with PD can live independent and productive lives. Approximately 500,000 American people currently have PD, although some estimates are much higher.

Past studies show that substantia nigra, a part of the brain which is mostly affected by the disease is highly sensitive to vitamin D, which shows that the sunshine vitamin may be important to this region.

Sunlight is essential for the production of vitamin D in the body which makes skin healthy. Putting up sunscreen though interferes with this process and as we age, body’s ability to produce the vitamin decreases. Vitamin D is found in food items such as eggs, liver, vitamin D fortified margarine, fish (tuna, salmon, sardines, herring and mackerel) and fortified milk.

Generally people get enough vitamin D through exposure to sunlight during normal day-to-day outdoor activities but some people have very low levels of daily sun exposure such as elderly people whose condition limits the amount of time they spend outdoors.
The researchers also think that the other reason for the low vitamin D level could be due to the genesis and origin of the disease.

The findings of the study appear in the October issue of the journal Archives of Neurology.

In 2006, researchers from the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam had found that an increase of vitamin D intake - from supplements, diet or sun exposure - may lower the risk of falls in the elderly.

Another previous study had found that individuals with lower levels of vitamin D in their blood are more likely to die sooner than people with higher levels of the vitamin D in their blood.