Vitamins C, E Linked to Lowering Fat Levels

CHICAGO — It sounds like a recipe for a coronary: Serve Egg McMuffins and Sausage McMuffins for breakfast, with slabs of fried hash browns on the side, to captive research subjects. You can almost feel arteries slamming shut.

Yet when huge doses of vitamins C and E were added to the diet, an extraordinary thing happened: The subjects’ arteries responded to the high-fat meal as though they had eaten a low-fat bowl of corn flakes.

Researchers caution that the small study’s finding is preliminary, but it appears to bolster scientific thinking that antioxidant vitamins can lessen the heart-disease risk posed by a fatty diet.

The 20 subjects who ate the fat-packed McDonald’s breakfast had impaired blood-vessel function for up to four hours afterward. But no such impairment was found on another day when they swallowed 20 times the recommended daily dosage of vitamins C and E immediately before eating the same meal.

The research appears in today’s Journal of the American Medical Assn.

The study may help explain why people sometimes have heart attacks right after eating a big, fatty meal and why some people with normal cholesterol levels develop heart problems, said Dr. Kenneth Cooper, author of “The Antioxidant Revolution” and founder of the Cooper Aerobics Center in Dallas.

“This is just further information that documents the beneficial effects of antioxidants,” Cooper said.

Antioxidants, such as the vitamins studied, work by soaking up dangerous byproducts that form when the body metabolizes oxygen. These byproducts, known as free radicals, can damage cells. They are thought to interact with some fats in a way that makes them clog arteries and can produce cellular damage that sometimes leads to cancer.

Dr. Meir Stampfer, a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard’s School of Public Health, called the study “a good piece of work and a nice step forward.”

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But, he added, “It was a small number of people and just one meal. We want to know what happens long term.”

It is unknown if antioxidant vitamins could block the effects of a consistently high-fat diet. Long-term use of vitamins in such high doses also could be harmful. “We’re not ready to recommend people take vitamins and eat whatever they want,” said Dr. Gary Plotnick, an author of the study and a professor of medicine at the University of Maryland. “We need to repeat this on a long-term basis . . . with more people.”