Vitamins That Cost Pennies a Day Seen Delaying Dementia

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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 a 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.

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