Study on Vitamin C and Gout

A new study conducted by Stephen Juraschek and team found that in middle-aged male physicians, vitamin C slightly decreased the likelihood of new gout diagnosis. The findings of this study were published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

A 500 mg/d vitamin C supplement may lower blood urate, according to short-term randomized trials, however vitamin E appears to have an opposite relationship with the risk of developing gout, according to observational research. In order to determine the impact of supplementary vitamin C (prespecified main exposure) and vitamin E (prespecified secondary exposure) on gout diagnosis, this study was carried out.

Data from the Physicians' Health Study II, a double-blind, factorial study of randomized vitamin C (500 mg/d) and vitamin E doses, were analyzed post hoc (400 IU every other day). The main result was new gout diagnosis, which were self-reported at baseline and during the whole follow-up of about 10 years.

Key Findings

• In our research, 14,641 randomly assigned male physicians had mean ages of 64 ± 9 years, 1% of them were Black, and 6.5% of them had gout at the time of randomization.
• Those who received vitamin C saw a lower incidence rate of new gout diagnoses during follow-up—8.0 per 1000 person-years versus 9.1 per 1000 person-years among those who received placebo.
• The vitamin C assignment resulted in a 12% decrease in new gout diagnosis.
• The BMI of individuals who experienced these effects was below 25 kg/m². A new diagnosis of gout was not linked to vitamin E.

In conclusion, this study clearly states the efficiency of vitamin C in gout. More study is needed to investigate the effects of increased vitamin C dosages on serum urate and gout flares in individuals with established gout.

Reference

Juraschek, S. P., Gaziano, J. M., Glynn, R. J., Gomelskaya, N., Bubes, V. Y., Buring, J. E., Shmerling, R. H., & Sesso, H. D. (2022). Effects of vitamin C supplementation on gout risk: results from the Physicians' Health Study II trial. In The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (Vol. 116, Issue 3, pp. 812–819). Oxford University Press (OUP). https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/nqac140