Health And Fitness News 

New Study Rebuffs Vitamin E And Heart Health Fears

A recently released study on the effect of vitamin E in heart health is a welcome change from the many studies that use too little of a vitamin or herb. Low dose studies, with poor parameters, often report poor results as a consequence of their poor study design - instead of being a true reflection of the effect of the supplement in question.

This study on vitamin E not only confirms what many have felt - that vitamin E can be beneficial in heart health at the right dose. But it also puts to rest the fears that some had that vitamin E acts as an oxidative agent. Oxidative agents are what causes the damage that antioxidants seek to reverse.

The study was published online in Free Radical Biology and Medicine. It differed from a lot of other studies on vitamin E and heart health in that it used a group of 8 participants, average age 34, who had polygenic hypercholesterolemia. This group was chosen because they represent people with a condition that may benefit from using vitamin E as a cardio protective agent.

This group of 8 women were a subset of the overall study, which followed 35 people with an average age of 42. Participants were given different doses daily for 16 weeks. The doses were either 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, or 3200 IU of vitamin E, or a placebo. It was a double-blind placebo controlled study.

The researchers wanted to measure the effect of different doses of vitamin E on plasma F2-isoprostanes concentrations, which is a biochemical marker of oxidative stress. They found that the results were dose dependant. To achieve a "statistically significant" reduction in plasma F2-isoprostane levels, much higher doses were needed than those studied in previous trials on vitamin E and hear health.

Daily doses of 1600IU per day achieved a reduction of 35% in plasma F2-isoprostane, and daily doses of 3200IU per day achieved a 49% reduction. The researchers did note that this did not make vitamin E a stellar antioxidant compared to some of the others available. They wrote:

"Even with this massive dose of vitamin E, you only observe a 50 percent reduction in F2- isoprostanes. So in my opinion, vitamin E is not the spiffy antioxidant everybody thinks it is - it's a pretty poor antioxidant."

As far as concerns about vitamin E being an oxidative agent, which were raised by some research in vitro (in the lab as opposed to in humans), the researchers found that their data found nothing to support those fears, across a wide range of doses.

Hopefully this study will spur further clinical trials on vitamin E using more effective dose ranges.