Vitamin E Thwarts Colds in the Elderly

http://www.healthsentinel.com/news.php?event=news_print_list_item&id=131

Amanda Gardner, "Vitamin E Thwarts Colds in the Elderly", Forbes,
August 17, 2004,
Link: http://www.forbes.com/lifestyle/health/feeds/hscout/2004/08/17/hscout520694.html

Nursing home residents who take daily doses of vitamin E appear to be
less likely to develop certain respiratory infections, a new study
finds.

The protective effect was most pronounced with upper respiratory
infections, such as the common cold. But it was virtually nonexistent
in lower respiratory infections, such as pneumonia.

"Our study indicates that elderly people who take this level of
vitamin E can reduce their chance of obtaining respiratory infections,
particularly upper respiratory infections," said Dr. Simin Nikbin
Meydani, lead author of the study that appears in the Aug. 18 issue of
the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The finding is one that could move quickly from the research realm to
the real world, she added.

"In general, vitamin E is a very safe vitamin and there are not very
many known side effects," added Meydani, a professor of nutrition and
immunology at Tufts University. She's also director of the nutritional
immunology laboratory at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research
Center on Aging, in Boston.

"The [beneficial] effects seemed fairly significant, not huge," added
Charles Mobbs, an associate professor of neurobiology and geriatrics
at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. "But still, by the
standards of the kind of patient population you're dealing with, even
that small effect, if it holds up, is important."

"Given the extreme ease with which vitamin E can be given, that really
is something that would have a significant impact in this vulnerable
population," Mobbs said.

Respiratory infections are a particular problem in nursing homes,
where they can sweep through the population easily and quickly.

Although colds are a problem in these settings, "the real issue in
nursing homes is influenza," said Dr. Joseph R. Dalovisio, head of
infectious diseases at the Ochsner Clinic Foundation in New Orleans
and president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. While the
flu was included in the study, the main benefit of vitamin E was seen
in colds.

Meydani pointed out, however, that colds do pose significant problems,
accounting for 30 percent of absenteeism in the general population.
"There is no clinically useful vaccine or therapy" for colds, she
said. "It's a major public health concern in general, but particularly
in the elderly."

The study enrolled 617 persons aged 65 and over living in 33 long-term
care facilities in the Boston area. Participants were randomly
assigned to receive either 200 international units of vitamin E a day
or a placebo for one year. All the participants also received a
multivitamin containing 50 percent of the recommended daily allowance
for various micronutrients. Almost three-quarters of the original
enrollees (451) completed the study.

Fewer participants in the vitamin E group got one or more respiratory
infections (60 percent vs. 68 percent for all participants, and 65
percent vs. 74 percent for those who completed the study). Fewer
individuals contracted upper respiratory tract infections (44 percent
vs. 52 percent for all participants, and 50 percent vs. 62 percent for
those completing the study).

The biggest effect was seen with the common cold, where people in the
vitamin E group had a 20 percent lower risk of catching a cold than
those in the placebo group.

Mobbs noted that vitamin E, along with vitamin C, is an antioxidant.
"I'm not impressed with the data on the whole for healthy people, but
this [nursing home residents] is a particularly vulnerable population
and that makes it a little bit more plausible," he said. "You may have
some oxidative stress that you don't have in a healthy population."

The next step, Meydani said, is to see if vitamin E has different
effects on bacterial infections than on viral infections. This seems
possible because the compound did not have any effect on lower
respiratory infections, such as pneumonia, which tend to be caused by
bacteria. However, it did have an impact on upper respiratory
infections, which tend to be caused by viruses, she said.

"We want to do a study where we can look at the microbiology and
demonstrate that this is why we saw the effect on upper respiratory
infections," Meydani said.

Roman,

It's refreshing to see something informational posted here amidst all the babble.

Thank you.

Peter