Our lives are the products of a lifetime of deficiencies or excesses mixed with genetics, beginning before we were born. We can grow up with too little nutrients or too many toxins. In attempts to understand how brains grow into adult brains with abnormalities like schizophrenia, researchers have looked at the dopamine neurotransmitter pathway and any influences upon it. In this study, researchers from the Queensland Brain Institute evaluated the multiple ways that vitamin D adequacy influenced the development of dopamine-releasing nerves. Given the likely role of these nerve cells in the development of schizophrenia or other neuropsychiatric diseases, understanding the effects of vitamin D levels in pregnancy could open avenues for prevention.
Prior studies had repeatedly indicated vitamin D as a key factor in the growth of brain cells that produce and release dopamine as a neurotransmitter. Given that the majority of this growth occurs during prenatal development in the womb, more research is looking out how inadequate vitamin D in a pregnant mom could influence the child’s future neuropsychiatric disease risk. This study looked for mechanisms to explain the ways vitamin D changed brain development.
The study demonstrated via cell line models that vitamin D affected several aspects of the dopamine system. At one level, it increased the length of neurites and the number of their connections, meaning those cells connected with more other brain cells at greater distances. At another level, it altered the proteins which influenced dopamine release at the synapses which were connected one brain cell to another. In the most interesting mechanism and according to the authors, for the first time in research, they demonstrated that chronic vitamin D increased the release of dopamine from brain cells in the culture.
While a great deal of debate continues in both the conventional and natural medicine worlds over how much vitamin D is enough, this study further establishes the potential for a link between maternal vitamin D deficiency and risk for schizophrenia later in life. If further research confirms that schizophrenia results from abnormal dopamine pathways in the brain, then vitamin D’s role in the development of that pathway in utero will become a major target for intervention to prevent. Helping our future mothers give birth to healthier babies with less risk of problems like schizophrenia means we will continue to urge adequate vitamin D intake prior to conception and during pregnancies.
Original Article:
Renata Aparecida Nedel Pertile, Rachel Brigden, Vanshika Raman, Xiaoying Cui, Zilong Du, Darryl Eyles. Vitamin D: A potent regulator of dopaminergic neuron differentiation and function. Journal of Neurochemistry, 2023; DOI: 10.1111/jnc.15829
Thanks to Science Daily:
University of Queensland. “Vitamin D alters developing neurons in the brain’s dopamine circuit.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 24 May 2023. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/05/230524182026.htm>.
Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.
