Researchers at Yale School of Medicine have found that a low concentration of vitamin E in the blood is linked with physical decline in older persons. Published in the January 23 issue of Journal of the American Medical Association, the study included 698 people age 65 or older who were randomly selected from the population registry in two municipalities close to Florence, Italy. The researchers, led by first author Benedetta Bartali of Yale, collected blood samples to measure the levels of micronutrients including folate, iron and vitamins B6, B12, D and E. They assessed physical decline in the study participants over a three-year period using an objective test of three tasks: walking speed, rising repeatedly from a chair, and standing balance.
“We evaluated the effects of several micronutrients and only vitamin E was significantly associated with decline in physical function,” said Bartali, a nutritionist and a Brown-Coxe Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale School of Medicine. “The odds of declining in physical function was 1.62 time greater in persons with low levels of vitamin E compared with persons with higher levels.”
Release date: January 22, 2008
Source: Yale University
Filed Under: Drug Discovery
