Antioxidants Don’t Lower Heart Risk
Study Examines Vitamins C, E, Beta-Carotene for Preventing Heart Attack, Stroke
WebMD News Archive
Antioxidants and the Heart continued...
Overall, none of the
vitamins, either alone or in combination, were found to significantly impact
any of these cardiovascular outcomes.
Women who took vitamins C and E did have slightly fewer strokes, but it was not clear if the association was
real or a function of the study design. Also, when participants who didn't take
the assigned supplements regularly were removed from the analysis, there was a
13% reduced risk of any incident of heart attack, stroke, bypass surgery
or angioplasty, or death due to cardiovascular causes linked to vitamin E, but
not for the other supplements studied.
“Overall we found no benefit on the primary combined end point for any of
the antioxidant agents tested, alone or in combination. We also found no
evidence for harm,” Cook and colleagues wrote in the Aug. 13/27 issue of the
Archives of Internal Medicine.
“While additional research into combinations of agents, particularly for
stroke, may be of interest, widespread use of these individual agents for
cardiovascular protection does not appear warranted.”
Healthy Diet Lowers Risk
While the intervention studies examining antioxidant supplements for
protection against heart attacks and strokes have proven disappointing, study
after study has also shown that eating a nutrient-rich diet can lower risk,
says Lichtenstein, who is a spokeswoman for the American Heart Association.
“Isolating individual components of a healthy diet hasn’t worked, but it
does appear that a diet that includes plenty of fruits, vegetables, and whole
grains is protective,” she says.
Study co-author JoAnn Manson, MD, who is chief of preventive medicine at
Brigham and Women’s Hospital, agrees.
“This research underscores the importance of focusing on proven methods for
preventing cardiovascular disease, including physical activity, healthy diet,
controlling high blood pressure and high cholesterol, maintaining healthy
weight, and avoiding tobacco,” she says in a news release.
The Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN), a supplement industry trade
group, states in an email to WebMD that this study contradicts several recent
studies of antioxidant supplements, which showed that antioxidants and vitamin
E may adversely affect mortality.