EDITORIAL – SEPTEMBER 2002

"Much ado about nothing!" would be an apt description of the results of a recent study on antioxidant vitamins. The study, carried out by medical researchers at Oxford University, was sponsored by two pharmaceutical companies. It involved 20,536 patients who had been diagnosed with coronary heart disease, other vascular disease, diabetes or hypertension. The participants were all considered at high risk of dying from coronary heart disease within the next 5 years – in other words, a very sick group of people. The patients were randomized to receive either a placebo or antioxidant vitamins (600 mg of synthetic vitamin-E, 250 mg of vitamin-C, and 20 mg of beta-carotene) daily for a 5-year period. At the end of the trial the researchers concluded that antioxidants are safe, but not effective in halting the progress of serious cardiovascular disease or in reducing overall mortality in this group of already seriously ill people.

These results should come as no surprise to anyone who has a basic understanding of how antioxidants work. Conditions like heart disease and cancer are, to a large extent, caused by oxidative stress. They only "blossom" when the body's antioxidant defenses are overcome by excessive free radical activity. Antioxidant vitamins assist the body's internally generated antioxidants in preventing oxidative stress and in so doing extend the latency period of the disease. In other words, antioxidants help PREVENT disease, but there is no evidence whatsoever that they halt or cure disease once it is in full progression – at least not in the daily amounts used in the Oxford trial.

So the results of the trial were pretty well a foregone conclusion and hopefully will not deter healthy people from maintaining their health by judicious supplementation with antioxidant vitamins.