Vitamin K is a vital nutrient for the human body. It plays a crucial role in stopping blood clotting and making sure that your bones stay healthy. On October 20th a Japanese study team took the molecule and found that it could also be an effective long-term treatment for neurodegenerative diseases. These diseases include Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s, and more. Further testing will be needed to determine the effectiveness of the treatment.
Naturally forming versions of vitamin K don’t affect the diseases very much, but the researchers created 12 different vitamin K alternatives that exhibited “a three-fold higher neuronal differentiation activity,” which basically means it caused cells in mice to make new neurons. This caused behavior changes similar to those seen in dementia patients when the disease is slowed. “Our research offers a potentially groundbreaking approach to treating neurodegenerative diseases. A vitamin K-derived drug that slows the progression of Alzheimer’s disease or improves its symptoms could not only improve the quality of life for patients and their families but also significantly reduce the growing societal burden of healthcare expenditures and long-term caregiving,” said the authors of the study.
Vitamin K being this useful to slowing the progression of these neurodegenerative diseases could be very useful. It is safe, tolerable and naturally occurring. These advantages would be easy for drug manufacturers to capitalize on dementia treatments. Despite this there would still be safety trials that need to take place, but the compound already has established safety and supplemental doses that would make it very straightforward.
