Folic Acid, Vitamin B12 Reduce Fracture Risk After Stroke
Reported March 2, 2005
(Ivanhoe Newswire) — A new Japanese study shows folic acid and vitamin B12 are safe and effective in reducing the risk of hip fracture in older patients after having a stroke.
Study authors explain stroke patients have a two- to four-times greater risk of hip fracture than their healthy peers. They believe this might be due to higher levels of plasma homocysteine in stroke patients, which may be associated with osteoporosis and risk of hip fracture. They set out to determine if folic acid and vitamin B12 decrease homocysteine levels.
Yoshihiro Sato, M.D., from the Mitate Hospital in Japan, and colleagues studied 314 stroke patients who received five milligrams of folate and 1,500 micrograms of B12 and 314 patients who received placebo. Over the two-year follow-up, there were eight fractures in the treatment group and 32 in the placebo group. In addition, patients taking folate and B12 experienced a 38-percent decrease in their plasma homocysteine levels whereas participants in the control group had their levels increase by 31 percent.
Researchers conclude that treatment with folate and vitamin B12 was effective in reducing the risk of post-stroke fractures. An accompanying editorial raises the point of whether a similar effect could be seen in other high fracture-risk patients and says this can only be answered with further study.
SOURCE: The Journal of the American Medical Association, 2005;293:1082-1088