By Anthony J. Brown, MD
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Consumption of foods high in vitamin C appears to protect against inflammatory polyarthritis, a form of rheumatoid arthritis involving two or more joints, new research suggests.
The findings, which appear in the Annals of the Rheumatic
Diseases, stem from a study of more than 20,000 subjects who
kept diet diaries and were arthritis-free when the study began.
The analysis focused on 73 subjects who developed inflammatory
polyarthritis during follow-up between 1993 and 2001, and 146
similar subjects who remained arthritis-free.
Dr. Dorothy J. Pattison, from the University of Manchester
in the UK, and colleagues found that low intake of fruits,
vegetables, and vitamin C raised the risk of inflammatory
polyarthritis. For example, subjects who consumed the lowest
amounts of vitamin C were three times more likely to develop
the condition than their peers who consumed the highest
amounts.
Although lower intake of fruits and vegetables seemed to
increase the arthritis risk, the trends were not statistically
significant, the researchers point out. Similarly, low intake
of vitamin E and beta-carotene was only weakly linked with an
increased risk of inflammatory polyarthritis.
The findings contrast with a recent report linking high
doses of vitamin C with worsening disease in guinea pigs with
osteoarthritis, the more common type of arthritis that occurs
with aging.
In an interview with Reuters Health, Pattison said that
these opposite findings may reflect the fact that rheumatoid
arthritis and osteoarthritis are caused by different
physiologic problems. With rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune
disease, the body attacks itself, she explained. In contrast,
osteoarthritis involves a degenerative process that worsens
over time.
Pattison added that her group has a study being reviewed
for publication that looks at the effect of meat consumption on
the risk of arthritis.
SOURCE: Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases, July 2004.
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