The article by Hoffman and Garewal,1 "Antioxidants and the Prevention of Coronary Heart Disease," was interesting and informative, and we would like to draw the authors' attention to some further information relating to the subject.
Hoffman and Garewal state that the Prospective Basel Study was the only large cohort study that did not find an association between antioxidants and cardiovascular risk.2 A 12-year follow-up of this study found an inverse correlation of both carotene and vitamin C to cardiovascular risk.3 The relative risk (RR) for ischemic heart disease was 1.53 (P=.02) for a plasma carotene concentration below the first quartile. Similar results were obtained for a combination of both low carotene and vitamin C concentrations (RR=1.96, P=.022). Furthermore, low carotene and vitamin C concentrations were also associated with increased cerebrovascular deaths (RR=4.17, P<.01).
A recently published study found that a combination of suboptimal levels of