Posted on 04/26/2006 9:25:50 PM PDT by neverdem
AP SCIENCE WRITER
A disappointing new study found that vitamin C and E supplements given to healthy pregnant women do not reduce their risk of developing preeclampsia, a complication that can be lethal to both mother and child.
Similarly, a recent British study found that the supplements do not help women who run a high risk of preeclampsia, and might even harm their babies by leading to low birth weight.
Preeclampsia happens when vessels in the mother's womb constrict, cutting off blood and oxygen to the fetus. It occurs in late pregnancy and produces a spike in blood pressure. No one knows why it happens, and there is no effective treatment other than inducing early delivery.
The condition kills about 76,000 women and babies a year worldwide. In the United States, it occurs in about 8 percent of pregnancies and accounts for 15 percent of premature births.
Pregnant women routinely take a prenatal multivitamin containing small amounts of vitamins C and E, and a previous small study suggested that supplements might help prevent preeclampsia.
However, in light of the new research, some doctors are saying expectant mothers should not take supplements beyond what is in their multivitamin.
"Given the information that we have, I would not recommend taking additional vitamins C and E," said Dr. Arun Jeyabalan, an obstetrician at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine who had no role in the research.
The study, led by researchers from the University of Adelaide in Australia, was published in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.
In the study, 1,877 healthy women took either vitamins or dummy pills during their second trimester. The women were not allowed to take other over-the-counter supplements, but a prenatal multivitamin was allowed.
The supplement group took four pills a day totaling 1,000 milligrams of vitamin C and 400 international units of vitamin E until they gave birth. A prenatal multivitamin contains about 70 milligrams of vitamin C and 15 IUs of vitamin E.
About 6 percent of moms in each group developed preeclampsia, and 10 percent of babies in each group had serious complications, including death.
Women who took supplements had higher rates of blood pressure and hospitalization. But the results were not statistically significant, and researchers said the difference could have occurred by chance.
Health experts say the study leaves open the question of whether expectant mothers in Third World countries with inadequate diets might benefit from high-dose supplements. Several international studies are under way to help answer that question.
A large government-funded study involving about 10,000 healthy women is also under way in the United States.
In recent years, doctors have warned that vitamins can have harmful effects, especially at higher doses. Vitamins and other supplements, which are available at supermarkets and are relatively inexpensive, are loosely regulated and their health claims are unproven.
Large doses of vitamin E earlier were found to be ineffective against heart attacks and cancer.
On the Net:
New England Journal: http://www.nejm.org
Preeclampsia Foundation: http://www.preeclampsia.org
I wonder which countries have the highest rates of preclamsia....would be interesting to know.
Genetic Test to Give Clues on Treatment of Hepatitis C
No Charges in Falsified Nuclear Waste Data (Latest fraud from the Clinton Administration)
Peak Oil Panic - Is the planet running out of gas?
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
Studies are always difficult to interpret. Remember the Calcium D study that seemed to show that supplemental Calcium did not reduce the risk of fracture or increase bone density.
But it was found out after the results were interpreted that many of the control group were taking supplemental Calcium on their own accord, so there was little if any difference between the calcium intake of the control group and the target group.
Same thing might be said about Vitamin C. I am firmly in the camp that thinks mos humans realistically need between 6 and ten grams a day of C, if not more.
So the difference between somebody who only takes say 400 mg and somebody who takes 1500 mg might not be very great.
Also, any studies on E can only be considered totally preliminary. E is as big, if not a bigger family of vitamins than B. 4 or 5 tocopherols, and a bunch of tocotrienols.
It's interesting that one of the first recognized roles of Vitamin E is as a needed nutrient for fetal development, the name itself reflects that. Hence the name tos (Greek: childbirth), phero (Greek: to bring forth) and ol (alcohol).
Very interesting! I hadn't seen or heard anything of this study. I was hospitalized with preeclampsia when expecting my youngest daughter after taking a multi-vitamin given to me by my obstetrician. She was born barely 7 months into the pregnancy and weighed 2lb 10ozs. By some miracle she thrived and other than being a small child until her mid-teens she had no setbacks in anyway and intellectually she's always excelled in everything she's attempted.
I suspect you are correct. I have become a believer. I found out, quite by accident, that large doses of Vit C erased the pain of a shoulder injury. I believe it was a torn rotator cuff but I did not go to a doctor because I knew my only options from a doctor was surgery or drugs.
The injury occured about two years ago and my shoulder is healed. I have done much study about Vit C on the Internet and would love to find someone who uses intravenous Vit C, in case I, or a loved one ever needs it.
In Adele Davis' book, she recommended large doses of Vit C for pregnant women. My daughter did it and when she had her baby, she said a quiver came over her body and the baby slid out.
I won't say that was proof of anything but it certainly is worthy of further investigation and from what I read in the Internet, Vit C has been very beneficial for pregnant women and their babies.
That is interesting about Vitamin C; however my doctor told me to avoid C a week prior to conception. I've been struggling w/ infertility for a couple years and just started taking large doses of Vit E - I've heard it helps.
My dad is struggling w/ arthritis in his leg, any recommendations?
I'm reluctant to advise anyone to do anything because I have no proof of anything but I can tell you my sister was probably on a collision course to death because of medications doctors had put her on for rheumatoid arthritis.
I found in the Internet about a condition called "leaky gut syndrome". I never once even told her to follow that advice but she felt she had nothing to lose. She went on the diet and her health has been restored. She is still fighting fibromyalgia but all in all, her health is MUCH improved.
I also had RA many years ago. AT that time, aspirin as pretty much the only treatment available. I took the large amount of aspirin recommended by my doctor but in a very short time, realized that was not the answer. That was when I found out about Adele Davis. I followed her advice and went on large doses of Vit C, Vit E and pantothentic acid. RA gone.
First, the drugs doctors recommend are very dangerous. My sister's liver was very damaged when she went to the diet for leaky gut syndrome. I think even the most skeptical members of our family now will have to admit that she has gained much from the change in strategy.
The internet is your friend. One of my favorite websites is Dr. Walt Stoll. I like message boards.
My motto is that if it hurts, take Vit C until it stops. Google "pain,Vit C".
It may even be worthwhile to google "Vit C, infertility".
Good luck to you and your dad.
Just another medical industry attack on nutrition. There are thousands of studies supporting health claims of supplements.
Unfortunately, the food industry wants to bury such studies to prevent being more mandates to add more nutrients to their processed foods. The pharmiceutical industry wants to bury positive nutrient studies to prevent competition. These articles need to specify who paid for the study.
The pharmiceutical industry has nothing to do with the recommended treatment for pre-eclampsia and eclampsia. By linking from the abstract in comment# 1, you can determine the following:
Sources of funding National Health and Medical Research Council 207744
Contact name Prof Caroline Crowther
Address University of Adelaide
Women's & Children's Hospital
72 King William Road
City/town North Adelaide
Zip/Postcode 5006
Country Australia
Tel +61 (0)8 8161 7647
Fax +61 (0)8 8161 7652
Email caroline.crowther@adelaide.edu.au
Sponsor The University of Adelaide (Australia)
When you are discussing vitamin supplementation using doses that are multiples of the current recommened dietary allowance, i.e. RDA, show me the studies.
Do you believe the food industry puts certain chemicals in food to create addiction, like nicotine in cigarettes?
Thank you so much for your reply!
similar story, similar results....child thrived!
We all know darn well the RDA is a joke. It has been shown over and over.
http://www.vitamincfoundation.org/vitcrda.htm
Vitamin C has long been a politically loaded subject in US medical circles, especially after the late Dr. Linus Pauling had the gall to pronounce that it was effective in decreasing the severity and duration of the common cold. Pauling’s 1971 meta-analysis of the then-published studies was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and concluded that vitamin C significantly lessened cold-related illness (P.00003). Although a P value less than 0.05 is considered significant and a P value less than 0.001 is considered outstanding, few physicians accepted Pauling’s analysis.
The medical community’s resistance to Pauling’s conclusion soon found a champion in Robert Chalmers, who, in 1975, published his own meta-analysis of “reasonably well controlled” studies in which he concluded that vitamin C only decreased colds by 0.11 days, a “minor and insignificant” matter.
The fact that Chalmers’ analysis flatly contradicted Pauling’s resulted in it being highly cited in the medical literature — more than twice as often to date. This discrepancy is especially telling because Chalmers’ analysis was more superficial and made numerous errors reporting on the results of studies considered in his analysis. Just how many errors was not clear until recently when Harri Hemilä of the University of Helsinki and Zelek Herman of the Linus Pauling Institute published a retrospective analysis of Chalmers’ review citing an appalling number of mistakes, almost all of which were prejudicial against vitamin C. Replacing Chalmers’ flawed data with correct data resulted in a finding of 0.93 fewer days of illness (P.01), a 21% savings in sick time (P.001) and a combined P value from the six statistically significant studies of less than 0.000004 (2-tailed probability of difference). In other words, Linus Pauling was right. Vitamin C does, in fact, decrease both the duration and severity of colds. And studies conducted after Pauling’s and Chalmers’ meta-analyses have born this out.
Why were so many scientists on the wrong side of this matter? The answer is simple: politics! Medical attitudes against vitamins were strident in the 1970s, despite a considerable volume of evidence indicating their effectiveness. In the 1990s, the anti-vitamin rhetoric is still alive, but it is being toned down to a large degree by the volume of young professionals entering science and medicine who know beyond a shadow of a doubt that their older peers are just plain wrong.
http://www.ceri.com/ed-vitc.htm
And if it's footnotes and references you want, go here:
http://www.yourhealthbase.com/vitamin_C.htm
The food industry takes nutrients OUT, to enhance preservation. For instance, when making white bread, they take out about two dozen nutrients, add back about six, and call it "enriched". They were recently required to increase the folic acid content.
After seeing an ER attending physician recommend Vitamin C supplements for an upper respiratory illness, URI, aka the common cold, I probably did a few days worth of research on the topic on what was probably then called MedLine at the time. This is what I recall about Vitamin C supplementation:
Pharmacologic doses, as opposed to physiologic doses, on a routine basis only helped patients with an absolute vitamin C deficiency, aka scurvy. It had no effect on the the incidence of URI or other illness.
Pharmacologic doses decreased the incidence of flu-like illness suffered by runners of marathons compared to those runners who took only placebos.
Pharmacologic doses decreased the duration of symptoms of those with URIs.
I use and recommend Vitamin C when I have a cold.
IMHO, Vitamin C supplementation with pharmacologic doses only seems to be good advice when a person or animal has certain abnormal stressors. I would be leary of what you find on PubMed if the results have not yet been replicated, even more so about what you find unsolicited, and linked on the Internet.
Here's the search strategy that I used to find that citation on PubMed. (flu-like illness or influenza or URI or upper respiratory illness or viral syndrome or stress) and (vitamin C supplementation or ascorbic acid supplementation)
Click on "Related Articles", near to the right of the title, and you'll find a bunch of articles about anti-oxidants with contradictory results. Caveat emptor.
"I am firmly in the camp that thinks mos humans realistically need between 6 and ten grams a day of C, if not more."
Hi Cgg, I'm curious, how many oranges would you have to consume to reach this amount?
Again, thanks.
Well, I remember I pinged you to some of the recent data on Vitamin D and you at least, at the time, didn't seem interested. And let me make it clear, I am not a doctor, or have any affilliation with pharmaceuticals, or with any nutbar snake oil salesmen MSM group.
Regardless of what might be on the net, and you must admit, plenty could be found to support either extreme, I do know this: My dog is (was) 13 years old and getting in pretty bad shape. His movement was slow, his rear quarters were bothering him quite a bit, same old story.
Now, at 14, he has basically shaved a couple years off his age. He moves better, his spontaneous energy level is much better, the little snot comes back in and teases me and won't let well enough alone.
And all I did was started giving him 1000 mg C a day, and a bit of glucosamine. About once a week, I'll give him an 800 IU Vitamin D.
So no matter what, I have to believe what I actually see with my eyes. And I know that personally, I do way better if I take 4 to 6 grams a day, and if I'm sick or stressed (which happens less it seems) than I up it to 8 or 10.
Too bad humans lack the gene, then we would be able to measure serum levels and have a clue. But we can take hints from animals that make their own. And all those studies seem to indicate that even 1000 mg is nowhere near enough.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.