Vitamin C reduces risk of stroke

A ten-year study of a Japanese rural community (published in the October issue of Stroke) has found an inverse relationship between serum vitamin C concentrations and subsequent stroke incidence.

The Shibata study, conducted by a multicenter team of Japanese researchers, followed a cohort of 880 men and 1,241 women who were free of stroke in 1977. Subjects were stratified into four groups according to serum vitamin C levels, and interviewed yearly to determine incidence of stroke. Strong inverse associations were observed between serum vitamin C concentration and all stroke (sex-adjusted and age-adjusted hazard ratios were 0.93, 0.72 and 0.59, respectively, for the second, third and fourth quartiles compared with the first quartile; p for trend=0.002), cerebral infarction (0.71, 0.59 and 0.51; p for trend=0.015) and hemorrhagic stroke (0.89, 0.75 and 0.45; p for trend=0.013).

When the researchers reanalyzed the stroke incidence data according to number of days per week the ...