Vitamin E Benefits 40% of Diabetic Heart Patients

A new study by researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and the Clalit Health Services in Israel suggests that diabetics with a particular version of a gene can benefit from vitamin E in the form of reduced risk of heart attacks and related deaths.

The findings provide a new answer to the long standing question of whether antioxidant vitamins such as vitamin E can help reduce the risk of heart disease. Vitamin E was a regularly prescribed treatment for heart patients earlier, but after several major studies showed no particular heart-protective benefits but rather potential harm from higher doses, doctors slowly started deferring from prescribing the vitamin.

Lead researcher Dr. Andrew Levy and colleagues however opined that not all patients might be at risk. They believed that certain patients – diabetic individuals with a particular variant of the gene haptoglobin (Hp) might actually benefit from vitamin E. Haptoglobin is a powerful antioxidant protein that stabilises haemoglobin and prevents inflammation in the walls of the arteries.

To confirm their opinion, Dr. Levy and colleagues undertook a study wherein they administered 400 International Units (IU) of vitamin E to a group of 1,434 diabetics daily for a period of 18 months. Each of these volunteers had the gene haptoglobin 2-2 present – a variant that is carried by around 40% of all diabetics.

At the end of the study period, the researchers found that people who took the vitamin pills had 50% lesser heart attacks, strokes and related deaths than patients with Hp 2-2 who were given a placebo pill. Majority of the differences were found in reduction in the number of heart attacks among Hp 2-2 patients on vitamin E; only seven were recorded compared to 17 volunteers who did not take the vitamin.

The researchers did not observe any side effects of taking the vitamin either. Based on the findings, the researchers suggest that genetic testing for the Hp 2-2 gene, “may be useful to identify a large group of diabetes individuals who could potentially derive cardiovascular benefit from a very inexpensive treatment,” Dr. Levy said.

Hp 2-2 is not the only version of haptoglobin and Dr. Levy’s team had earlier found that Hp 2-2 is actually an inferior antioxidant compared to other variants of the gene. They also found that this difference is more marked in patients with diabetes. Another finding of the researchers showed that diabetic patients with Hp 2-2 had 2-3 times the risk of suffering a cardiovascular event compared to other diabetics.

“This version of the gene does not determine whether or not an individual will develop diabetes but rather whether an individual with diabetes is susceptible to developing the devastating complications associated with diabetes such as heart disease, kidney disease or visual loss,” Dr. Levy noted.

Findings of the study were presented at the American Heart Meetings in Orlando, Florida and have been published online in the journal Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology.

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