vitamins C and E cut the risk of complications from pregnancy-induced high blood pressure, scientists report today.
Pre-eclampsia, a condition characterized by high blood pressure and protein in the urine, occurs in up to 8% of pregnancies, says Catherine Spong, a co-author of the study in The New England Journal of Medicine. A leading cause of illness and death in pregnant women and infants, pre-eclampsia can be cured only by delivering the baby.
"It's like most pregnancy conditions: We don't have great preventative therapies," says Spong, chief of the Pregnancy and Perinatology Branch at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Only baby aspirin seems to help protect against pre-eclampsia, she says, but only in high-risk women and only by a modest 10%
reduction in risk.
Roberts and Spong emphasized that their findings don't mean that women should stop taking prenatal vitamins.
"This has absolutely no relevance to the use of standard doses of vitamin C and E as part of
prenatal vitamins," Roberts says. "These (study) doses were enormously higher, where they act as a drug rather than a vitamin."
Bonnie - this study was a waste of money. No one ever said C or E prevents eclampsia. Vitamin E is good for excess clotting. The C is helpful for a strong immune system so pregnant women won't get as many colds and allergic symptoms. The study should have focused upon MAGNESIUM, which is an effective therapy for pre-eclampsia. How many prenatals have at least 250 mg. of magnesium?
That said, I cannot even take these results at face value for the following reasons:
- Instead of using a mixed tocopherol vitamin E, which includes the entire vitamin E spectrum (alpha, beta, gamma, delta) they only used alpha tocopherol, which is not sufficient.
- 400IU of vitamin E is too low a dose to mimic the effect of baby aspirin. It must be 800Iu or more.
1 comment:
Once and again readed and listen large doses of vitamins C and E only profits chem industry.
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