Serum Folate and Vitamin‐b ₁₂ Levels in the Elderly

A bstract : The serum levels of folic acid and vitamin B 12 were estimated in 3 groups of subjects: Group 1 consisted of 59 elderly patients screened from 152 consecutive hospital admissions from homes for the aged and from a geriatric center; Group 2 consisted of 51 geriatric patients admitted to the hospital from their own homes; and Group 3 (controls) consisted of 100 younger healthy subjects who were not in the hospital. Medication with drugs known to interfere with the biologic assay of these vitamins was the chief reason for eliminating all but 59 of the 152 patients tested originally for Group 1. Very low levels of serum folate (less than 3 mμg/ml) were found in 24 per cent of the Group 1 geriatric patients, in 7.8 per cent of the Group 2 geriatric patients, and 5 per cent of the younger controls. Two of the geriatric patients had anemia due to folate deficiency and responded to oral administration of folic acid. The high incidence of unusually low serum folate levels was attributed to widespread folic‐acid deficiency resulting from poor nutritional intake and related to organic disease, especially neurologic disability; apparently it bore no relationship to the chronologic age of the patients. The significantly higher level of serum vitamin B 12 found in the geriatric group possibly was due to the increasing use of vitamin B 12 (orally or parenterally) in the treatment of elderly patients during the last fourteen years.