Vitamin Power

Vitamin deficiency may lead to depression and dementia in the elderly.

By Brian Arundel, published on September 01, 2000 - last reviewed on January 25, 2008

Here's one more reason to take your vitamins seriously: Vitamin deficiency may well be associated with depression and dementia in the elderly.

In a study conducted by the National Institute on Aging, disabled women over age 65 with a vitamin B12 deficiency were twice as likely to suffer from depression as those with a full store of the vitamin. The report indicates that 27 percent of the women studied who were severely depressed were deficient in B12, compared to only 17 percent of mildly depressed women, and 15 percent of the more content participants. It's not clear, however, whether taking vitamin B12 will help relieve depression in the elderly, warns Brenda Penninx, an assistant geriatrics professor at the Sticht Center on Aging in North Carolina and the study's lead author.

In related research, men who took vitamins C and E seemed to have mental abilities that were superior, on the average, to those men who did not. The study of 3,300 Japanese-American men, published in Nature, reinforces growing evidence that antioxidants offer protection against damage from free radicals—unstable molecules that play a role in more than 60 health conditions, including the aging process. According to Kamal Masaki, study author and University of Hawaii associate geriatrics professor, "antioxidants like vitamins E and C may protect against vascular dementia by limiting the amount of brain damage that persists after a stroke."