Written by Greg Arnold, DC, CSCS. Patients with Crohn’s disease had vitamin B12 and Folic acid levels that were 18% and 20% lower respectively than in the healthy group of participants. Vitamin B12 and Folic Acid lower homocysteine levels which in turn lower inflammation.
Inflammatory bowel disease is an inflammatory condition of the intestines that has no known cause, but is thought to involve an immune reaction of the body to its own intestinal lining. There are two forms of inflammatory bowel disease: ulcerative colitis (UC), which is limited to the colon, and Crohn’s Disease (CD), which can involve any part of the digestive system. It is estimated that over one million Americans suffer from either UC or CD (1).
Now a new study (2) has found that folic acid and vitamin B12 may help with the inflammation that characterizes inflammatory bowel disease, especially in Crohn’s disease patients. In the study, 138 patients with diagnosed inflammatory bowel disease (45 with Crohn’s disease and 93 with ulcerative colitis) provided blood samples to measure for vitamin B12 and folic acid. They were then compared to 53 healthy subjects who also provided blood samples.
When looking at blood levels of vitamin B12, those in the control group (342 picograms/milliliter) had 18 % higher levels than those in the Crohn’s Disease group (281 pg/mL)) and nearly identical levels with those in the ulcerative colitis group (348 pg/mL). For folic acid, those in the control group (9.9 pg/mL) had 20% higher levels than the Crohn’s patients (7.7 pg/mL) and 13% higher than the ulcerative colitis patients (8.6 pg/mL). When they looked at patients deficient in vitamin B12, they found deficient levels in 4 patients in the control group (7.5% of control patients) vs.10 in the Crohn’s group (22.2%) and 7 in the ulcerative colitis group (7.5%). For folic acid deficiency, they found two patients in the control group (3.7%) vs.13 in the Crohn’s group (28.8%) and 8 in the ulcerative colitis group (8.6%).
The researchers pointed to the ability of B12 and folic acid to lower homocysteine levels as their primary method of inflammation control (3,4) and concluded that “[blood levels of] vitamin B12 and folate deficiencies are more common in patients with CD compared to UC patients and controls.”
Source: Yakut, Mustafa, et al. “Serum vitamin B 12 and folate status in patients with inflammatory bowel diseases.” European journal of internal medicine 21.4 (2010): 320-323.
© 2010 European Federation of Internal Medicine
Posted September 10, 2010.
References:
- “Inflammatory Bowel Disease” posted on the emedicine website June 9, 2004.
- Serum vitamin B12 and folate status in patients with inflammatory bowel diseases. Eur Jou Int Med 2010; 21(4): 320-323.
- A. Papa, A. Santoliquido, S. Danese, M. Covino, C. Di Campli and R. Urgesi et al., Increased carotid intima-media thickness in patients with inflammatory bowel disease, Aliment Pharmacol Ther 22 (2005), pp. 839–846.
- Lowering blood homocysteine with folic acid based supplements: meta-analysis of randomised trials. Homocysteine Lowering Trialists’ Collaboration, BMJ 316 (1998), pp. 894–898.
