Vitamin B-9 and MTHFR variants In Progress

Join Study

Objective:Do common variations in the MTHFR gene keep vitamin B from working? Can a group of ordinary people come together to find out? And maybe find a treatment?

Organizers

melanie

rwmccauley

Instruments

MTHFR Tracker

Participant Tasks

Check out the FAQ / informed consent (in development), and sign off on it.
Submit data on MTHFR variants.
Participate in at least 3 different 2 week trials, involving taking over-the-counter vitamins, then measuring homocysteine levels with a blood draw each time (blood tests cost about $70 each).
Record your blood test data here

Participant Requirements

Please no participants with known vitamin B deficiences, anyone not able to follow the outlined vitamin protocol, or anyone who might have health problems related to high homocysteine levels.

Genome Variants

rs1801131, rs1801133

Participants

Data Participants

Discussion Participants

Description

In the MTHFR gene (methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase), 2 small variations in DNA (SNPs rs1801133/C677T & rs1801131/A1298C) keep vitamin B9 (or folic acid) from being metabolized into its active form (folate).

Without this form of vitamin B, homocysteine may accumulate. This may lead to nutritional deficiencies and symptoms associated with diabetes complications, including vascular damage and nerve damage. This is also associated with blood clots and pregnancy loss.

Up to 60% of people may have some form of MTHFR mutation.

We aim to:

Find people with MTHFR mutations - by collecting genotype data from volunteers who have used genetic testing services.
Try simple interventions - like special vitamin B supplements available over-the-counter.
See if they work - by asking participants to share results from blood tests performed at commercial labs.

Drug companies won't do this type of study -- there's little money to be made in over-the-counter treatments.

But we can. The tools to do this -- to look at genomic information, to measure treatment results, and to analyze the data -- are now cheap or free.

All we need are concerned people who care enough to help. Want to answer this question? Want to help build community and tools that let people take personal charge of their health?

Tags

b9, blood tests, crowd sourced clinical trial, folic acid, genetics, homocysteine, mthfr, vitamin b, vitamins

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EriGentry Hi Melanie and Raymond -- any plans to soup up the MTHFR study? Not saying it needs souping up, but I'd love to hear about future plans for this research!

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rwmccauley I got emails from LabCorp with all of my blood test results. I keep stiff like that in a personal/medical folder, but I made a copy of each relevant homocysteine report in a special MTHFR folder, so I could easily find the original collection date and time. That helped me enter all of my homocysteine levels. What are you folks doing? Do you think it would be useful to have a tool automatically extract your levels from those reports?

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