Vitamin B12 Essay

879 Words2 Pages

Rebecca Feliciano
Nutrition 425
Project two
Vitamin B12 deficiency and its effects on the Elderly
Vitamin B12 deficiency, or Cobalamin deficiency, occurs frequently among elderly people. Vitamin B12 is a nutrient that helps keep the body's nerve and blood cells healthy and helps make DNA, the genetic material, in all cells. Vitamin B12 also helps prevent a type of anemia called megaloblastic anemia that makes people tired and weak. Often times, the symptoms of this deficiency are undetectable because the signs are subtle. This creates several issues including identifying those at risk for deficiency and providing those individuals with the correct treatment. Throughout the paper I will address issues such as the causes and evaluations, treatments and procedures, and dietary impacts of vitamin B12 deficiencies using several studies related to vitamin B12 deficiency within the elderly. The purpose of this paper is to determine what the effect of lack of vitamin B12 has on the elderly and what, if any, can be a preventative for such deficiency.
In a study titled, “Clinical relevance of low serum vitamin B12 concentrations in older people: the Banbury B12 study,” participants of age 75 years or older were examined to find any associations between cognitive impairment, depression and neuropathy within the blood measurements of vitamin B12. Individuals who are deficient do not always present the common symptoms which might include anemia or neuropathy. Instead, more subtle symptoms might arise. Individuals may feel fatigue and have cognitive impairment but because these are also symptoms of old age, these symptoms may go unnoticed. A total of 1,000 individuals took part in this study each from the older living community and did not h...

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...ke of vitamin b12 or cobalamin levels. Each study presented in this particular article showed that there were several stages in the cause of acquiring the deficiency and in the stage of intake solely through food, the cause of the deficiency were strict vegetarianism without vitamin supplementations. The conclusions similarly show that in each study in this article, the causes were noticeable to be by malabsorption, dietary deficiency and anemia. However contrasted, the studies did not each show that heredity was involved in elderly patients and lack of vitamin B12.
Cobalamin deficiency appears to be more common among patients who have several chronic neurological conditions such as dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, strokes, depression, and Parkinson’s disease. However, it is unclear if these are causal relationships with the development of a vitamin b12 deficiency.

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