Antioxidants keep arteries clean.

• Position: Heart Transplants - Medical research - Brief Article - Statistical Data Included

A clinical study by scientists in the Linus Pauling Institute, Oregon State University, Corvallis, and the Cardiovascular Division of Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Mass., suggests that people who receive heart transplants, and possibly some other types of transplants or medical procedures, may get important health benefits by taking supplements of vitamins C and E. Patients who received supplements of these two antioxidant vitamins had very little coronary arteriosclerosis associated with their transplants. Ordinarily, this is one of the most-important limitations to the long-term survival of cardiac transplant patients, whose arteries tend to thicken and clog unusually fast after a transplant, and this disease is present in more than 70% of recipients within three years.

Oxidant stress tends to contribute to accelerated coronary arteriosclerosis following a transplant, and the body's natural antioxidant defenses are often reduced. Treatment with antioxidant vitamins appears to have a significant effect in addressing this problem, the study found. "Arteriosclerosis is a health condition that's a problem for many people, but it is much more acute and occurs more rapidly in people who have had heart transplants," points out Balz Frei, director of the Linus Pauling Institute.

The double-blind study was done with 40 heart transplant patients. Half of them received...