Lung Health Associated with Vitamin E in Women

by CP Staff

Vitamin E was recently studied to determine if there was an association with improved lung health maintenance in women. Previous studies indicate that antioxidants are associated with reduced risk of chronic lung problems.

In this new double-blind, randomized and placebo-controlled study, the subjects included 38,597 female health professionals age 45 years or older with no known lung issues at the beginning of the study. The women received 600 IU every other day of vitamin E and 100 mg every other day of aspirin or placebo. The subjects were evaluated by physicians for the development of chronic lung problems.

After 10 years of follow-up, the researchers reported that there were 760 cases of chronic lung problems in the group receiving vitamin E compared to 846 cases of chronic lung problems in the placebo group. This showed that that there was a 10 percent decrease in the risk of developing chronic lung issues with vitamin E supplementation, even after controlling for cigarette smoking, age, aspirin intake, multivitamin use or dietary vitamin E intake. The study also showed that cigarette smoking increased the risk of chronic lung problems by over 4 times compared to subjects that never smoked.

The study authors concluded that vitamin E supplementation resulted in a reduction of chronic lung problems in women by 10 percent.

Reference:

Agler AH, Kurth T, Gaziano JM, Buring JE, Cassano PA. Randomised vitamin E supplementation and risk of chronic lung disease in the Women’s Health Study. Thorax. 2011 Jan 21. Published Online Ahead of Print.