Nutritional state of vitamin b in elderly with alcoholism and cigarette smoking in rural areas of korea

Abstract

This paper is to report that the vitamin B nutritional status of the rural elderly people in Korea is poor, and that alcoholism and cigarette smoking seriously harm the B vitamin status. The subjects were seventeen alcohol dependent elderly, and the fifteen controls with their age, sex, and years in education matched. Subjects with alcoholism had increased activity coefficients for erythrocyte transketolase (TK) and decreased red cell folate concentrations, indicating that their thiamin and folate nutriture was harmed by alcoholism. The analysis of variance on the data showed that TK, glutathione reductase (GR), and erythrocyte folate concentrations were influenced by alcoholism, and aspartate aminotransferase (AST) by cigarette smoking. The interaction of alcoholism and smoking was found to have a negative effect on red cell folate concentrations. These results collectively suggest that B vitamin nutrition in the rural elderly people is compromised and is suffered further by alcoholism and cigarette smoking. © 2001 Elsevier Science Inc.