Cognitive abnormalities doubly elevate with advancing age, with decreased intake of dietary nutrients. The cognitive assessment undertaken focused on this rampant under-diagnosed cognition. The burgeoning prodromal insidious stage of cognitive impairment demands rapid diagnosis for preserving mental health, or else severe deterioration takes over, leading to compromised mental abilities in the elderly.

Background:The Neurodegenerative diseases are increasingly affecting the elderly with a severe impact on their brain health. There is a wide gap in supplementation based studies for increasing the cognition levels of the geriatric population, especially in developing countries like India which are at extreme risk of developing neurological disorders. And recently Vitamin B12 has drawn considerable attention due to its ability to improve the cognitive status. Current literature has linked the possibility of alleviating neurological disorders in the elderly with effective vitamin B12 management. Abundant animal and human models have proved that supplementation of vitamin B12 is beneficial for the restoration of cognitive functions.Objective: To supplement vitamin B12 deficient mild cognitively impaired geriatric patients with injectable doses of vitamin B12 followed by impact evaluation. Methods:Screening of the mild cognitively impaired patients was carried out using the MiniMental State Examination and Yamaguchi Fox Pigeon Imitation test. Baseline information was elicited from the patients residing in urban Vadodara (a district in the state of Gujarat), India. This included socio-demographic, medical and drug history, anthropometric and physical activity pattern, in addition to biochemical parameters comprising of serum vitamin B12 and glycated haemoglobin profile. A sub-sample of 60 patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) demonstrating severe vitamin B12 deficiency were conveniently enrolled for injectable doses of Vitamin B 12 in the dosage of 1,000 µg every day for one week, followed by 1,000 µg every week for 4 weeks & finishing with 1,000 µg for the remaining 4 months. An intervention sixmonth after the experiment with all the parameters were elicited.Results: Vitamin B12 supplementation resulted in a significant (p<0.001) improvement in the MMSE scores of the patients with a rise of 9.63% in the total patients. Gender-wise division also highlighted a significant increase (p<0.001) in the scores by 6.79% and 12.46% in overall males and females and a 10.20% and 8.24% rise for young-old (60-69 yrs) and old-old (70-85 yrs) categories, respectively. As a result, 27 patients progressed towards the normal category from the MCI state being assessed by MMSE scores. In the same manner, YGFPIT too demonstrated a 38% increase in normal with 35% males, 42% females, 41% young-old and 31% old-old moving to normal status. Thus, a total number of 28 patients progressed to the normal condition as per YGFPIT. Conclusion:Ultimately, vitamin B12 supplementation was discovered to be significantly effective, as the placing of serum vitamin B12 within MCI patients caused a turn from the deficiency state to sufficient levels and in turn increased their performance in MMSE and YFPIT scores.

Flaxseeds owing to alpha-linolenic acid are most efficacious for safeguarding cardio-metabolic and brain functions. An attempt was made to prepare and evaluate flaxseed balls in three variations viz. 10 g (T1), 15 g (T2) and 20 g (T3) roasted flaxseed powder and 15 g jaggery respectively in each preparation suitable for geriatrics. Sensory evaluation was conducted on 9-point hedonic scale. T3 was the highly acceptable variant among other flaxseed balls, which was thereafter subjected for overall organoleptic evaluation. Flaxseed globs are best stored for up to a period of 3 days irrespective of their packaging materials and post this duration, unlikely alterations are observed in organoleptic attributes.