Vitamin D deficiency impairs spatial learning in adult rats

Background: through its membrane and intracellular receptors, vitamin D regulates many vital functions in the body including its well-known actions on musculoskeletal system. Growing body of evidences demonstrate that vitamin D undergoes some of behavioral aspects of neurocognition. The present study was designed to evaluate the effect of food regimens without vitamin D or with a supplement of 1,25[OH]2D3 on spatial performance of adult rats

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Methods: the animals were trained in the Morris water maze to find a hidden platform. The time spent and the distance traveled to find the platform, speed of navigation and the percentage of unsuccessful trials were considered for assessment of the task learning

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Results: our findings indicated that the vitamin D-deprived rats had a significant lower performance compared to both the controls and the animals receiving 1,25[OH]2D3 supplementation. Concerning the unsuccessful trials, lack of vitamin D resulted in the highest failures in the maze navigation. The regimen with additional 1, 25[OH] 2D3 did not considerably influence learning of the maze task

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Conclusion: we concluded that while vitamin D deficiency deteriorates the spatial task learning, the 1,25 [OH] 2D3 supplementation did not effectively underlie the maze performance. Iran. Biomed. J. 17 [1]: 42-48, 2013