The new study, reported in the Aug. 20 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, analyzed almost 3,100 volunteers. Three-quarters of them took various doses of vitamin B and folic acid (which is chemically a B vitamin), while the others got a placebo, an inactive substance.
The patients got periodic blood tests to measure their level of homocysteine, which is an inflammatory chemical linked to higher rates of heart disease. The researchers expected homocysteine levels to drop in the folic acid groups.
The study found that coronary artery disease patients taking cardiovascular drugs didn't cut their risk of death, nonfatal heart attack or clot-related stroke for about three years.
Physicians at Haukeland University Hospital in Bergen, Norway, had to stop the study early because of concerns among the participants about preliminary results from a similar Norwegian study suggesting no benefits from the treatment and an increased risk of cancer from the B vitamins.
Folic acid is a synthetic form of folate, a B vitamin found in many fruits and vegetables. Many food products in the United States are routinely fortified with folic acid, because it reduces the incidence of a specific class of birth defects called neural tube defects.
