Vitamins fail to reduce risk of recurring strokes

Some vitamins can lower elevated blood levels of homocysteine, considered a risk factor for heart disease and stroke. But taking high doses of the vitamins -- B-6, B-12 and folic acid -- didn’t actually prevent strokes, coronary artery disease or death in a recent study.

Researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and their colleagues studied 3,680 survivors of non-disabling strokes being treated at 56 centers in the U.S., Canada and Scotland. For two years, all participants took a daily multivitamin, with half also taking high doses of folic acid and the two B-vitamins. The other half got low doses of the vitamins.

Reporting in the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Assn., the researchers found that the vitamins did lower homocysteine levels and that bigger doses brought bigger reductions. But there was no difference in the percentage of patients from each group who suffered a second stroke -- 8.1% of the low-dose vitamin recipients and 8.4% of the high-dose recipients. The numbers were similar for heart attacks and other major coronary events.

Regardless of vitamin dose, patients with the highest starting levels of homocysteine were the most likely to have a second stroke.

-- Jane E. Allen