by Dan Roberts
January 2009
A UC Berkeley study led by Gladys Block, PhD, suggests that 1,000 mg of daily supplemental vitamin C can lower concentrations of C-reactive protein (CRP), the marker associated with systemic inflammation. (Free Radical Biology and Medicine, Jan. 1, 2009). It suggests that a daily dose of supplemental vitamin C can lower CRP levels in healthy, non-smoking adults in two months.
Gladys Block and her staff found that for people with elevated CRP levels, the amount of CRP reduction achieved by taking vitamin C in this particular study is comparable to that in many statin studies.
A multinational clinical trial led by researchers at Harvard Medical School (the Jupiter Trial), found that among people who had high levels of CRP at baseline, levels of CRP were 37 percent lower in the subjects who took statins compared to those who took the placebo.
In the UC Berkeley study on vitamin C, participants who started out with CRP levels greater than 2 milligrams per liter had 34 percent lower levels of CRP with vitamin C compared with a placebo after two months.
“This is clearly a line of research worth pursuing,” said Dr. Block. “It has recently been suggested by some researchers that people with elevated CRP should be put on statins as a preventive measure. For people who have elevated CRP but not elevated LDL cholesterol, our data suggest that vitamin C should be investigated as an alternative to statins, or as something to be used to delay the time when statin use becomes necessary.”
The benefits to the consumer are that Vitamin C is considerably less costly, and it does not carry the risk of serious side-effects associated with statins.
Source: Ellen Troyer, MT, MA (Chief Research Officer, Biosyntrx.com)
