Washington, Oct 14 (IANS) Parkinson’s patients are more likely to be deficient in vitamin D than same age healthy adults or those with Alzheimer’s disease, according to a study.”Patients with chronic neurodegenerative diseases frequently have many risk factors for vitamin D insufficiency,” said the report, including advancing age, obesity, avoidance of sun exposure, residence in northerly latitudes and having darker skin.

Marian L. Evatt and colleagues at Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, compared vitamin D levels of 100 patients with Parkinson’s disease to that of 97 Alzheimer’s patients and 99 healthy individuals matched for age, sex, race, genotype and geographic location.

“Significantly more patients with Parkinson’s disease (55 percent) had insufficient vitamin D than did controls (36 percent) or patients with Alzheimer’s disease (41 percent),” the authors of the study wrote.

The average vitamin D concentration in the group with Parkinson’s was considerably lower than Alzheimer’s and healthy groups (31.9 nanograms per ml vs. 34.8 nanograms per ml and 37 nanograms per ml, respectively), according to an Emory University release.

These findings were reported in the October issue of Archives of Neurology and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.