Pharmavite Clears Up Confusion: Vitamin B is for Prevention, Not Treatment

Lately vitamin talk has been over the news due to recent studies emerging and debating the effectiveness of particular vitamins.  From these studies, I usually find that there is still and will continue to be controversy over vitamins and supplements no matter what, making it increasingly important for consumers to be both aware and critical in matters regarding their health. 

This morning, I heard that the parent company of Nature Made, Pharmavite, has critiqued a recent study published by JAMA about vitamin B entitled, "Mortality and Cardiovascular Events in Patients Treated with Homocysteine-Lowering B Vitamins After Coronary Angiography".

After looking into the design of the trial, Pharmavite noted the following major flaws (This list comes from the write-up of the article on Yahoo (Click here if you want to read the entire article):

• Length of Treatment: Nutrients work best in studies that look at their effect on health over a five to ten year period (and even longer) to see how they promote good health. They cannot correct a disease that was caused by lifelong poor health, especially in a short period of time. Although they work best in prevention, they can be very effective in diseases that were caused by the nutrient deficiency, such as people with cardiovascular disease (CVD) due to high homocysteine, which is a B vitamin deficiency.
• Patient Population: This study evaluated the effects of B vitamins on a population that had existing cardiovascular heart disease and other health conditions and were on multiple medications. The intent was to see if the B vitamins would reduce their homocysteine which would result in a reduction of future cardiovascular events.
• Homocysteine Levels: The findings of this study are not surprising given outcomes of similarly designed RTC studies: lowering homocysteine in patients with existing cardiovascular disease does not appear to reduce the risk of subsequent cardiovascular events. The major criticism of this study was most of the population did not have high homocysteine to begin with. The mean homocysteine went from 10.8 nmoles/L (normal) to 7.6 nmoles/L (normal). Essentially, researchers treated a population who didn't have high homocysteine (that is, that was not the cause of their heart disease) with a homocysteine lowering therapy. Had patients with much higher homocysteine levels been included in the trial, or they isolated the groups with high homocysteine, an even greater reduction in homocysteine levels would likely have been observed.

The key take-away from this?  Carroll Reider, of Pharmavite scientific affairs noted, “Vitamins are meant to be taken for preventative measures to support long-term good health, rather than treat disease,”.  A study like this also should alert consumers like you and me to apply a degree of caution when trusting the concusions deduced from these studies.

Personally, it seemed odd to me that Pharmavite would take this stance.  After all, it is in Pharmavite's best interest to keep silent and secretely hope that studies such as this would correlate with higher vitamin sales.  As many of you know, Pharmavite owns Nature Made, (a company that I work for), so while I'm a little taken aback by this effort - I'm also especially proud that this stance was taken.  I really think it is a bold move to make, but one that is obviously in the best interest of consumers. 

What are your thoughts?  Do you think more vitamin manufacterers should step in and shed some light to these studies?  As a consumer, do you feel mislead?