Vitamin C & Strokes

A large European study of 20,649 men and women aged 40-79 years were examined over the past 10 years. The objective was to examine the relationship between their baseline plasma vitamin C concentrations and risk of incident stroke.*

Over an average of 10 years, 448 incident stokes occurred. Those with higher baseline plasma vitamin C concentrations had a 42% lower risk of stroke than those with the lower vitamin C concentrations. This was independent of age, sex, smoking, body mass index, systolic blood pressure, cholesterol, physical activity, prevalent diabetes and myocardial infarction, social class, alcohol consumption, and any supplement use.

The study concludes that plasma vitamin C concentrations may serve as an identifier to determine who is at high risk for a stroke.

*P.K. Myint, R.N. Luben, A.A. Welch, S.A. Bingham, N.J. Wareham, and K.-T. Khaw. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. ”Plasma vitamin C concentrations predict risk of incident stroke over 10 y in 20 649 participants of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer – Norfolk prospective population study.” January 2008, Volume 87, Pages 64-69.