Quick Reads
Things You Dont Know About Vitamin D and The Brain
Vitamin D Is Familiar To All Of Us; It Is Needed For Bone Growth And Bone Remodelling By Bone Cells. Vitamin D Deprivation Makes Our Bones Thin, Brittle, Or Misshapened. This is USERN Quick Read #14
Vitamin D is More Good for Your Brain than Your Bone
PharmD, USERN Junior Ambassador, Netherlands
Vitamin D Is Familiar To All Of Us; It Is Needed For Bone Growth And Bone Remodelling By Bone Cells. Vitamin D Deprivation Makes Our Bones Thin, Brittle, Or Misshapened.
Interestingly, scientists discovered that Vitamin D plays numerous roles in normal brain physiology as well. Vitamin D deficiency has a profound influence on multiple brain processes, including cognitive functioning, in both healthy individuals and those plagued with neuropsychiatric illness. Vitamin D deficiency disrupts structural brain connectivity and harms learning and memory by destabilizing perineuronal nets (PNNs) that provide scaffolding for neurons. Vitamin D levels avert specific enzymes from breaking down PNNs, but when vitamin D levels drop, these enzymes convert unrestricted and start to degrade PNNs.
PNNs are made of proteins and sugar molecules that form a robust and supportive mesh around specific neurons. In this way, the nets stabilize the associations between these neurons with other neurons. The brains of vitamin D–deficient mice have reduced densities of PNNs in the hippocampus, a brain district which is crucial to memory and learning. As neurons in the hippocampus lose their supportive perineuronal networks, they may have trouble keeping connections, and this ultimately leads to a loss of cognitive function. Indeed, a noticeable drop in both the number and strength of connections between neurons can be seen in the hippocampus of vitamin D-deficient mice. Intriguingly, the right side of the hippocampus is more affected by vitamin D deficiency than the left side.
Loss of hippocampal function may contribute to severe memory deficits and distorted perception of reality, hallmarks of schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a brain disorder described by symptoms such as hallucinations, delusions and cognitive impairment. About 70% of people with schizophrenia have inadequate vitamin D, and schizophrenic patients are also inclined to have more disruption on the right side of their hippocampus. A link has long been identified between being born in winter or spring in high-latitude regions such as Denmark, a time when there is considerably less sunlight and less vitamin D production in the body, and an increased incidence of schizophrenia. A new study shows that Danish babies with vitamin D deficiency at birth have a 1.5 times increased risk of having schizophrenia as an adult. More strikingly, vitamin D accounts for as much as 8% of Denmark's schizophrenia cases!
Source:
Thomas H. J. Burne et al. Brain Struct Funct (2019)