Source: Anesthesiology  |  Posted 9 years ago

Vitamin C treatment has a possible role in benefiting patients with coronary heart disease by countering the adverse effects of a high-fat meal.

The postprandial serum triglyceride concentration is raised after a high-fat meal and this postprandial state is critical in atherogenesis, inducing endothelial dysfunction through an oxidative stress mechanism.

These were the findings of a study that included 74 patients with coronary heart disease and 50 people without the disease but who had risk factors. These two groups were split into subgroups: those who received 2 g of vitamin C and those who did not after eating high-fat meal.

The study was conducted by Dr Ling Liu, Department of Cardiology, Hunan University, Hunan, People's Republic of China, and co-workers.

They found that postprandial serum triglyceride concentration increased significantly at two to five hours after the high-fat meal in all groups. The fasting flow-mediated dilatation and nitroglycerin-induced dilatation of patients with coronary heart disease were impaired compared with those without disease.

Although the postprandial flow-mediated dilatation was significantly aggravated in people not taking vitamin C (both with and without heart disease), this parameter in patients and subjects taking vitamin C showed no significant change.