Heart Disease
FACTORS THAT COULD LOWER RISK OF HEART DISEASE AND STROKE – (02-13-06)
Riboflavin Lowers Homocysteine in individuals Homozygous for the MTHFR 677C to T Polymorphism.
This is a perfect example of a problem with medicine and research today. Awhile back there was some debate over whether checking homocysteine added any predictive value to determining CVD risk and whether the addition of B12 and folic acid could lower risk of heart disease and stroke. Many said the effect was not strong enough to warrant the “hassle.” Now we see that riboflavin also plays a large role in this pathway, and in patients with the MTHFR genotype that had low riboflavin levels to start with, the reduction in homocysteine levels was a high as 40%.
So, any studies that did not find a strong effect of B12 and folic acid for lowering CVD risk now needs to go back to their data and see if the addition of riboflavin would’ve affected the results.
