Vitamin C rich diet may cut arthritis risk

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Vitamin C rich diet may cut arthritis risk

2004-06-11 16:05:09

 

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By Anthony J. Brown, MD

 

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Consumption of foods high in vitamin C

appears to protect against inflammatory polyarthritis, a form of

rheumatoid arthritis involving two or more joints, new research

suggests.

 

The findings, which appear in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases,

stem from a study of more than 20,000 subjects who kept diet diaries

and were arthritis-free when the study began. The analysis focused

on 73 subjects who developed inflammatory polyarthritis during

follow-up between 1993 and 2001, and 146 similar subjects who

remained arthritis-free.

 

Dr. Dorothy J. Pattison, from the University of Manchester in the

UK, and colleagues found that low intake of fruits, vegetables, and

vitamin C raised the risk of inflammatory polyarthritis. For

example, subjects who consumed the lowest amounts of vitamin C were

three times more likely to develop the condition than their peers

who consumed the highest amounts.

 

Although lower intake of fruits and vegetables seemed to increase

the arthritis risk, the trends were not statistically significant,

the researchers point out. Similarly, low intake of vitamin E and

beta-carotene was only weakly linked with an increased risk of

inflammatory polyarthritis.

 

The findings contrast with a recent report linking high doses of

vitamin C with worsening disease in guinea pigs with osteoarthritis,

the more common type of arthritis that occurs with aging.

 

In an interview with Reuters Health, Pattison said that these

opposite findings may reflect the fact that rheumatoid arthritis and

osteoarthritis are caused by different physiologic problems. With

rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune disease, the body attacks

itself, she explained. In contrast, osteoarthritis involves a

degenerative process that worsens over time.

 

Pattison added that her group has a study being reviewed for

publication that looks at the effect of meat consumption on the risk

of arthritis.

 

SOURCE: Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases, July 2004.

 

 

 

 

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