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Schizophrenia is a severe mental health condition that often requires medications to manage symptoms. Recently, researchers from the University of Queensland and Aarhus University compared the level of vitamin D at birth with the likelihood of becoming schizophrenic. They looked at over 2,600 individuals between 1981 and 2000 in Denmark.
What was found is that babies with low vitamin D had a 44 percent greater risk of having schizophrenia later in life. This is quite a significant and important finding. Past studies have also seen an association between low vitamin D and autism.
Vitamin D is a neurosteroid that is an important molecule for many functions in the body. While we are not sure, it is possible that vitamin D helps lower inflammation in the brain. Also, vitamin D can help turn on and off the genes that are related to building healthy nerve cells. Finally, it has been shown that adequate vitamin D during pregnancy helps modify the brain's ability to make and use dopamine—this might be a key to the brain's risk, at that seminal age, for the later development of schizophrenia.
What we need to take from this study is that, although there are many contributing factors to schizophrenia, one possible way to help prevent it is to make sure each pregnant mom has adequate levels of vitamin D. She can do this by getting extra sun and also by taking a vitamin D supplement.
Also, pediatricians may want to look for low vitamin D levels in families with a history of schizophrenia and, if needed, add vitamin D to the diet of newborns.
