Word: snowdons
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...While Snowdon's study was small, involving only 30 individuals, the statistical relationship was unusually powerful. Moreover, it follows a similar finding made by researchers in England last year. "It's a remarkable confirmation in an entirely different population," says David Smith, director of Oxford University's Project to Investigate Memory and Ageing...
...fact, it was shortly after reading the Oxford paper that Snowdon began trolling through his database to see if he too could find a link between folate and Alzheimer's. He began with 30 brains that had been discovered in autopsy to have had the distinguishing plaques and tangles of Alzheimer's disease. Of those 30 brains, 15 had the severe atrophy of the neocortex associated with advanced dementia. Next Snowdon analyzed blood samples taken from the nuns while they were alive. He screened for 19 different components, including vitamin E and cholesterol. The only statistically significant relationship he found...
Despite the strong evidence, Snowdon cautions, it is still possible that folate does not play a direct role in the disease. The link could be coincidental. Or it could be that the same mechanism that triggers the disease also destroys the body's ability to retain folate. But folate and the amino acid it controls, homocysteine, have already been implicated in a broad range of diseases, as well as certain neurological birth defects...
...that folate bestows some protective effect directly on the cell. Or it may be that without folate to control it, homocysteine reaches levels that are toxic to neurons or to the cells that line blood vessels. This could lead to the type of ministrokes found in Snowdon's earlier studies...
Meanwhile, how much vitamin B should you take? That's what the nuns asked too. Unfortunately, there is very little information about how such nutrients are metabolized in the elderly. Snowdon suggests that taking double the current recommended daily allowance is probably a safe precaution. But it is possible to take too much of a good thing. Excessive folic acid can be dangerous if it masks symptoms of other diseases...