Cut back on extra doses of C and E.

Extra doses of vitamins such as C and E may blunt some benefits of widely prescribed cholesterol-lowering drugs, a new study concludes.

Some research suggests that the so-called antioxidant vitamins, intended to offset the harmful effects of oxygen, may help keep arteries healthy, while other reports have disputed this idea.



The latest study compared patients with coronary artery disease who were taking a mix of antioxidant vitamins and drugs to those who were taking drugs alone. The study used the vitamin niacin and the drug Zocor, which lowers artery-clogging LDL cholesterol while increasing beneficial HDL cholesterol.

It found that the volunteers' HDL levels failed to rise as much as expected when they mixed the vitamins with their cholesterol drugs.

"It looks like antioxidant supplements in general ... have no value of their own" and may actually interfere with cholesterol drugs' ability to boost HDL, said Dr B Greg Brown of the University of Washington at Seattle, one of the researchers.

The one-year study was published in the August issue of Atherosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology, a journal of the American Heart Association. It involved 153 patients aged 33 to 74 who had heart disease and high LDL levels.