14 DAY TRIAL // A new investigation has revealed that consuming additional amounts of folic acid from those naturally produced in the body has no bearing on a person's chance of developing cancer or heart diseases.
The chemical, which is also known as vitamin B9, was touted as having the property to prevent the onset of these conditions, but thus far these claims have not been substantiated by rigorous studies.
Therefore, consuming supplements that have the stuff is useless in terms of preventing disease. The vitamin acts directly on homocysteine, which is a building block of proteins.
The stuff is accumulated in the body when people eat meat, and elevated concentrations of the chemical have been determined to be a risk factor for heart diseases and afflictions of blood vessels.
A five-year study demonstrated hat homocysteine levels are indeed reduced by folic acid intake, but found no difference in heart disease, cancer and death rates in a study group.
Researchers looked at the results obtained by 8 trials conducted on the issue. Among themselves, the investigations covered health records belonging to 37,485 people.
Of this study group, half took vitamin B9 supplements, in concentrations between 0.8 and 40 milligrams every day. The other half of the study group was given either a placebo, or very small amounts of the chemical.
The investigation revealed that people who took folic acid had homocysteine levels that were 25 percent lower than those exhibited by their peers in the placebo group.
But the first group did not exhibit the improvements in disease rates that researchers were expecting to find. In fact, the group that took the supplements had a slightly higher death rate.
Over the five year period, some 13.8 percent of those who took the acid died, whereas only 13.6 percent of those who took the placebo did the same.
When it came to cancer, some 0 percent of those in the test group developed the disease, whereas only 8.2 percent of those in the placebo group got the condition.
One of the main conclusions of the new study is that, while vitamin B9 makes no difference for the better, it does not have any adverse side-effects either.
Details of the new survey appear in the October 11 issue of the esteemed medical journal Archives of Internal Medicine, My Health News Daily reports.