By LINDSEY TANNER, AP Medical Writer
CHICAGO (AP) - Hormone supplements and antioxidant vitamins showed no heart benefits in older women who already had heart disease, according to yet another study that casts doubt on some long-held assumptions about both treatments.
In fact, heart disease also appeared to progress more quickly in women who took hormones, high doses of vitamins E and C, or both, for nearly three years than in those on dummy pills. The finding was not statistically significant, but the researchers said the trend was worrisome.
It's a little bit surprising that the outcomes for both treatments were so bad. When the study was designed in the early 1990s, both of these treatments were thought to be highly promising, said study author Dr. David Waters, chief of cardiology at San Francisco General Hospital and a professor at University of California in San Francisco.
Hormone supplements once were thought to benefit the heart because naturally occurring estrogen helps keep cholesterol at healthy levels. But a landmark study announced last summer found that the pills may actually increase the risk of heart attacks and strokes.
Antioxidant vitamins have been touted as disease-fighters and also promoted as helping keep the heart healthy, theoretically by blocking the effects of cell-damaging oxygen molecules. But more recent studies have questioned the heart benefits and suggested the vitamins might interfere with cholesterol-lowering drugs.
The new study appears in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.
This study adds to the growing body of evidence that hormone therapy is not helpful in the treatment — or in the prevention — of heart disease, and it provides new information on the absence of benefit from high-dose antioxidant vitamins, said Dr. Claude Lenfant, director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, which funded the research.
The study involved 423 postmenopausal heart patients who were put on one of four treatments for nearly three years: hormones; vitamins E and C; hormones and the two vitamins; or placebo pills.
Women in the hormone group took estrogen pills daily or combined estrogen-progestin if they had not had a hysterectomy, since progestin helps protect against uterine cancer.
Women in the vitamin group took 800 international units of vitamin E and 1,000 milligrams of vitamin C daily.
At the study's start and end, all women had angiograms — heart imaging tests that can detect blockages or narrowing of coronary arteries.
Two women on placebos died, compared with four in the hormone group, six in the vitamin group and 10 in the vitamin-hormone group.
The findings support recommendations from the American Heart Association, which says taking hormone supplements or antioxidant vitamins to benefit the heart is unwarranted, said Dr. Robert Bonow, AHA president.
John Hathcock, vice president of nutritional and regulatory science at the Council for Responsible Nutrition, a trade group for makers of vitamins and other dietary supplements, called the results a chance finding and said the statistics are too weak to support the researchers' conclusions.
He argued that the study does not disprove earlier research implying a benefit from vitamins.