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Vitamin E Does Ease Colds for Elderly
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In immune system studies on the elderly,
participants who received 200 international units of vitamin E
daily for 1 year were 20 percent less likely to suffer from
upper respiratory infections, such as colds, than those who
received placebos. |
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April 19, 2005 Researchers claim they have found
hard evidence that Vitamin E can sooth the problems of the common cold
in the elderly.
Though folk remedies aimed at soothing the common
cold abound, there's no vaccine or antiviral therapy available to cure
it. But researchers, funded by
ARS and supported by public and private grants, say they have found
this hard evidence that vitamin E can make a difference, at least among
the elderly.
Nursing-facility residents who consumed 200
international units (IU) of vitamin E daily for 1 year were less likely
to get the sniffles than those who took a placebo. The study was lead by
Simin Nikbin Meydani, who directs the Nutritional Immunology Laboratory
at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts
University.
The findings are important, in part, because the
elderly have a lower immune response to begin with.
The scientists studied 617 individuals who met
eligibility requirements after screening of 2,814 potential candidates.
Criteria included being over 65 years of age, not being room bound, not
being tube fed, and not being on kidney dialysis or ventilating
equipment. Volunteers were also required to have been free of antibiotic
treatment for at least 2 weeks before the start of the study.
All 451 participants who completed the study were
residents in some type of long-term-care nursing facility located in or
around Boston, Massachusetts.
About half the participants were given a daily
supplement of 200 IU of vitamin E. The other half received a daily
placebo capsule containing only 4 IU of vitamin E. To help control other
dietary factors that affect immune response, each participant received a
capsule containing 50 percent of the recommended dietary allowance for
essential micronutrients. Participants were supplemented for 1 year.
Nurses examined each volunteer weekly and logged
their health status, focusing specifically on signs and symptoms of
respiratory infection.
The scientists found that those taking the vitamin
E supplements were 20 percent less likely to suffer from upper
respiratory infections, such as colds. Among the 34 million elderly
living in the United States, that 20 percent would translate to about 7
million fewer of them acquiring respiratory infections, Meydani
estimates.
"There was not only a lower incidence of colds
among the vitamin-E-taking residents as a whole, but also fewer colds
per person among those who did get colds, compared to the placebo
group," says Meydani.
The researchers chose to supplement with 200 IU of
vitamin E each day because their earlier research showed that amount to
be optimal for improving immune response in the elderly. "We don't
believe that doses greater than 200 IU per day would be more effective
in reducing respiratory infections in elderly," says Meydani.
Good dietary sources of vitamin E include certain
cereals, wheat germ, nutsespecially sunflower seeds and almondsleafy
green vegetables, and vegetable oils. The National Academy of Sciences
has set an upper tolerable limit for vitamin E of 1,500 IU a day.
The study results were published in the Journal of
the American Medical Association. The authors recommend that future
studies be geared toward learning how vitamin E affects different types
of respiratory infections.By
Rosalie Marion Bliss, Agricultural Research Service Information
Staff.
This research is part of Human Nutrition, an ARS
National Program (#107) described on the World Wide Web at
www.nps.ars.usda.gov.
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