foodconsumer.org: Homocysteine may be only a biomarker for diseases

Homocysteine may be only a biomarker for diseases
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admin on 01/01/2010 18:41:00
 
Hyper-homocysteinemia has been associated with a range of nervous diseases
including stroke, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, epilepsy, multiple
sclerosis and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
Drugs have been developed to lower levels of homocysteine in the blood, but
reducing serum homocysteine via vitamin therapy does not result in prevention of
vascular disease, meaning that homocysteine may serve as only a biomarker, not a
cause for any disease as many  doctors believe.
In a report published in the Jan 2010 issue of Frontiers in bioscience (scholar
edition), Ientile R and colleagues from University of Messina in Messina, Italy
said that normalization of hyper-homocysteinemia led to improvement in patients
with cognitive impairment.
By Jimmy Downs