Good News About Vitamins C & E and Your Heart 

Three recently published clinical trials have once again shown that the antioxidant vitamins C and E may have positive effects on cardiovascular health. 

In a study designed to look at the benefits of vitamin C in women, S.K Osganian and his colleagues used information from diet questionnaires filled out in 1980 by approximately 85,000 female nurses along with 16 years of follow-up data on heart disease cases that were collected during the Nurses’ Health Study. The researchers found vitamin C supplement use was associated with a 28 per cent lower risk of coronary heart disease. (Osganian SK, et al. Vitamin C and risk of coronary heart disease in women. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2003 Jul 16;42(2):246-52.) In an accompanying editorial, Balz Frei, director of the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon, noted that the study by Dr Osganian and his colleagues did appear to indicate that vitamin C itself seems to have a protective effect, rather than simply being a marker of fruit and vegetable intake. 

In a second study, the subjects were 520 smoking and nonsmoking men and postmenopausal women aged 45 to 69 years with elevated serum cholesterol who were followed for six years. Atherosclerotic progression was assessed ultrasonographically. Supplementation with combination of vitamin E and vitamin C slowed down atherosclerotic progression in this long running clinical trial. (Salonen RM, et al. and Antioxidant Supplementation in Atherosclerosis Prevention Study.   Six-year effect of combined vitamin C and E supplementation on atherosclerotic progression: the Antioxidant Supplementation in Atherosclerosis Prevention (ASAP) Study. Circulation. 2003 Feb 25;107(7):947-53.) 

Finally, these beneficial results are not limited to those who are middle-aged and above. In a third study, scientists investigated whether vitamin supplements could improve cardiovascular health in children at high risk of heart disease. Researchers measured the function of the endothelium (inner lining of the blood vessels) as a marker for cardiovascular health because endothelial dysfunction is a precursor to atherosclerosis. They tested endothelial function in 15 subjects–– seven females and eight males between the ages of nine and 20––with inherited lipid disorders. All subjects received nutritional counseling and were put on a diet low in saturated fats and cholesterol for the six-month study.  

After the first six-week period, the children were randomly given either 500mg of vitamin C and 400 IU of vitamin E per day or placebos for six weeks. The subjects then went through a second washout period and afterwards the groups were reversed. Researchers noted that low-fat diet had no effect on endothelial dysfunction, event though it was associated with an 8 per cent reduction in LDL cholesterol. The vitamin supplements, however, improved endothelial function to normal levels, which is to say, levels found in healthy children. (Engler MM, et al. Antioxidant Vitamins C and E Improve Endothelial Function in Children With Hyperlipidemia. Endothelial Assessment of Risk from Lipids in Youth (EARLY) Trial. Circulation. 2003 Aug 11, electronic publication ahead of print.)