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The Ewha Medical Journal
Ewha Womans University School of Medicine

Ewha Med J 1993; 16(1):27-35

pISSN: 1598-7450

DOI: https://doi.org/10.12771/emj.1993.16.1.27

Original Article

Associations of Vitamin B12 and Folic Acid Concentrations in Psychiatric Disorders

Kyu Wol Yun, Haing Won Woo

Copyright ⓒ 1993. Ewha Womans University School of Medicine. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Published Online: Jul 24, 2015

Abstract

The serum vitamin B12(B12) and folic acid estimations were performed on 206 psychiatric inpatients, consecutive admissions to a Ewha Womans University Hospital, Neuropsychiatric Department.

The mean serum B12 value in the subjects(1004.24±479.76pg/ml) was somewhat higher than the normal serum B12 value and none of the subjects has serum B12 deficiency.

The mean serum B12 value was the lowest in 21~30 age group and the highest in 31~40 age group(p<0.05).

The mean serum folic acid value(8.09±4.15ng/ml) was in the range of normal value. But the patients with low serum folic acid value(O~2.5ng/ml) were 6 cases(2.9%), consisting of 3 schizophrenia, 1 mood disorder and 1 epilepsy and the ratio of patients with low anti equivocal serum folic acid value(<5.Ong/ml) was 23.8%. The mean serum folic acid value was the lowest in 11~20 age group and the highest in 51~60 age group(p<0.05).

Patients with epilepsy, organic mental disorder and schizophrenia(in order) had significantly lower mean serum B12 & folic acid values and alcoholism had significantly higher mean serum B12 & folic acid values(p<0.05).

It was concluded that serum B12 deficiency was not related to the psychiatric disorders and the serum folic acid deficiency, but folic acid deficiency appeared to be in certain psychiatric disorders and related to the chronicity of mental illness.