Abstract
Background and objective: Alzheimer disease is a progressive disorder and the most common cause of dementia. One of the probable mechanisms of Alzheimer disease is the vascular injury. Hyperhomocysteinemia is considered as a risk factor of the vascular diseases because it is detected in 25% of the patient with the vascular disorders. The aim of this study is to investigate relationship between homocysteine level of serum and Alzheimer disease and its relationship with the severity of disease.
Materials and Methods: This investigation was performed as a case- control study on 40 Alzheimer patients and 40 non- Alzheimer ones. Alzheimer patients were selected based on the diagnostic criteria of the American psychological association. The severity of illness was determined based on Reisberg scale and the patients were divided into three groups. Mental status of the patients was evaluated by Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) too. Serum samples of the patients and the control groups were taken and freezed and after collecting of the samples, the serum levels of homocysteine were measured by ELISA method.
Results: The average serum homocysteine level in the patient group was 23.01 ± 14.40 mmol/L and in the control group it was 15.40± 6.23 mmol/L (P=0.003). The average serum homocysteine level in the first group of the patients was 21.7± 12.7 mmol/L, in the second group 22.3±13.8 mmol/L and in the third group 24.9±17.2 mmol/L that demonstrates the serum homocysteine level is related with severity of the illness but this relationship was not statistically significant (p=0.8). The relationship between MMSE score and serum homocysteine level of patients was not significant too (P=0.4).
Conclusion: The average serum homocysteine level in Alzheimer patients was higher than control group which is concordant with the most of studies conducted in this field but did not show a significant relationship with the severity of illness.