Vitamins That Cost Pennies a Day Seen Delaying Dementia

[Addison]

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 today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that vitamins B6 and B12 combined with folic acid slowed atrophy of gray matter in brain areas affected by Alzheimer’s disease.
“You don’t have any other options for these patients, so why not try giving them this cocktail of B vitamins?” says Johan Lokk, a professor and head physician in the geriatric department at Karolinska University Hospital Huddinge in Sweden, who wasn’t involved in the study.
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 gray 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

“It’s the first and only disease-modifying treatment that’s worked,” said A. David Smith, professor emeritus of pharmacology at Oxford University in England and senior author of the study. “We have proved the concept that you can modify the disease.”

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-20/vitamins-that-cost-pennies-a-day-seen-delaying-dementia.html?cmpid=yhoo

[MannyGoldstein]

1. Great news, but it won't work in America, except for the VA

and perhaps a few other situations.

Docs learn about treatments from sales reps and conferences. And at the conferences, they learn from top docs who are paid serious coin by the drug companies. So there's nobody to educate docs about inexpensive treatments, and no mechanism to enforce its use.

However... *I'll* start using it with my mother-in-law tomorrow. Thanks!

[bemildred]

2. Jesus F. Christ, 5.2 % to 0.6% annually, that's a ~90% reduction in RATE.

For a slow disease of the elderly, that is nearly a cure; most will be dead before they notice they are sick. And dirt cheap too.