Can More Vitamin D Early in Life Help Prevent Alzheimer’s?
An innovative new study provides a mechanism by which getting more vitamin D earlier in life might help prevent Alzheimer’s disease later in life.
A protein named tau is essential for the health of nerve cells. But if tau molecules begin to bunch up into neurofibrillary tangles, they begin to damage the very cells they were meant to keep healthy. Tau tangles are an important marker of cognitive impairment: the more neurofibrillary tangles inside the brain cells, the worse the cognitive impairment.
Several studies have shown that low levels of vitamin D are associated with an increased risk of cognitive impairment and dementia.
A just published study set out to explore the possibility that more vitamin D early in life might prevent tau tangles later in life. If that possibility proved true, that would give rise to the possibility that getting more vitamin D might help prevent Alzheimer’s disease.
The study included 729 people with an average age of 39 who did not have dementia at the beginning of the study. At the beginning of the study they had their vitamin D levels measured. 16 years later, they had PET scans. Higher levels of vitamin d were associated with significantly lower tau depositions in the brain. This result was found both for the brain in general and in the regions of the brain that are the earliest affected in Alzheimer’s.
What’s especially exciting about this study is not just the discovery of a possible mechanism by which vitamin D might help prevent Alzheimer’s, but the demonstration that vitamin D could significantly improve markers of dementia in early midlife when there is a greater chance of reducing the risk of Alzheimer’s.
Neurology Journals. April 1, 2026;2 (2) e000057.
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