Disputas Jelena Zugic Soares
Overlege Jelena Zugic Soares ved Medisinsk Legetjeneste ved Lovisenberg, vil forsvare sin avhandling for graden ph.d: 1. september 2023, kl. 13:15 i Runde Auditorium, Domus Medica, Sognsvannsveien 9 (Det Medisinske Fakult, UiO).
Publisert 22.08.2023
Sist oppdatert 18.12.2023
Tittelen på avhandlingen er "Vitamin D in cognitive impairment and Alzheimer´s disease".
Prøveforelesningen med tittel "Nutritional prevention of cognitive decline, what is the evidence?" avholdes samme sted kl. 10:15.
Sammendrag
Dementia, especially due to Alzheimer`s disease (AD), is a major and increasing health problem in the elderly population worldwide. To date there is no curative treatment. It is therefore crucial to examine all possibly modifiable factors for disease development; vitamin D deficiency is one of them. There are conflicting results regarding vitamin D and cognitive function in the literature, and little is known about the presence and impact of vitamin D in the human brain.
The aims of the thesis were to explore the possible significance of both serum and intrathecal Vitamin D for cognitive health in older persons, by investigating associations with cognitive performance, volumetric MRI measurements, serum/cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) ratios, VDR gene polymorphisms and biomarkers for AD and cytokine levels in CSF.
Lower levels of vitamin D in serum were associated with worse performance on cognitive tests of executive function and lower volumes of cortical grey matter.
Although almost all persons had normal levels of vitamin D in serum, patients with a clinical diagnosis of AD had lower levels of vitamin D in CSF compared to the control group.
Lower levels of vitamin D in CSF were associated with pathological levels of tau protein and phosphorylated tau protein, but not with β-amyloid in CSF. We did not find a consistent association between polymorphisms of vitamin D receptor with vitamin D levels or cognition, nor an association between vitamin D levels in CSF and selected cytokines in CSF.