Antioxidant vitamins and heart disease risk

[Guest guest]

Hi All,

Vitamin supplementation, rather than fruit and vegetables

consumption does not cut heart disease development nor

mortality, it seems, in the abstract not in Medline yet pdf-

available paper below.

Am J Clin Nutr 2004;80:1508-20

Antioxidant vitamins and coronary heart disease risk:

a pooled analysis of 9 cohorts

Knekt, Ritz, Mark A Pereira, Eilis J OReilly, Katarina

Augustsson, E Fraser, Uri Goldbourt,

Berit L Heitmann, Gvran Hallmans, Simin Liu, Pirjo Pietinen, Donna

Spiegelman, June s, Jarmo Virtamo,

Walter C Willett, B Rimm, and Alberto Ascherio

Background: Epidemiologic studies have suggested a lower risk of

coronary heart disease (CHD) at higher intakes of fruit, vegetables,

and whole grain. Whether this association is due to antioxidant

vitamins or some other factors remains unclear.

Objective: Westudied the relation between the intake of antioxidant

vitamins and CHD risk.

Design: A cohort study pooling 9 prospective studies that included

information on intakes of vitamin E, carotenoids, and vitamin C and

that met specific criteria was carried out. During a 10-y follow-up,

4647 major incident CHD events occurred in 293,172 subjects who

were free of CHD at baseline.

Results: Dietary intake of antioxidant vitamins was only weakly

related to a reduced CHD risk after adjustment for potential nondi-

etary

and dietary confounding factors. Compared with subjects in the

lowest dietary intake quintiles for vitamins E and C, those in the

highest intake quintiles had relative risks of CHD incidence of 0.84

(95% CI: 0.71, 1.00; P = 0.17) and 1.23 (1.04, 1.45; P = 0.07),

respectively, and the relative risks for subjects in the highest

intake

quintiles for the various carotenoids varied from 0.90 to 0.99. Sub-

jects

with higher supplemental vitamin C intake had a lower CHD

incidence. Compared with subjects who did not take supplemental

vitamin C, those who took >700 mg supplemental vitamin C/d had

a relative risk of CHD incidence of 0.75 (0.60, 0.93; P for trend

0.001). Supplemental vitamin E intake was not significantly related

to reduced CHD risk.

Conclusions: The results suggest a reduced incidence of major CHD

events at high supplemental vitamin C intakes. The risk reductions at

high vitamin E or carotenoid intakes appear small.

Cheers, Alan Pater