Vitamin E supplements may help to prevent heart attacks in patients with diabetes.
Diabetics are twice as likely to have heart disease or a stroke as people without diabetes, as high blood glucose levels can lead to narrowing of the blood vessel walls, affecting blood flow and increasing the chance of blocked arteries.
Researchers now believe that daily doses of extra vitamin E could protect the heart health of diabetes patients with a particular version of the haptoglobin (Hp) 2-2 gene, which is carried by 40 per cent of diabetics.
Patients who took 400IU of vitamin E every day for 18 months had more than 50 per cent fewer heart attacks, strokes and related deaths than those who took a placebo.
The findings are published in the journal Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology.
Dr Andrew Levy, a researcher at the Technion Faculty of Medicine, said that genetic testing "may be useful to identify a large group of diabetes individuals who could potentially derive cardiovascular benefit from a very inexpensive treatment".
Vitamin E supplements may help to prevent heart attacks in patients with diabetes.
