Vitamin Information Center

Abundant dietary vitamin C may lower the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, say researchers from the Institute of Metabolic Science at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, England.

Scientists there followed 21,831 men and women aged 40 to 75 over a 12-year period, during which they tracked diet, exercise, and blood content. By the end of the study, 423 men and 312 women-3.2 percent of the study group-had developed type 2.

The researchers concluded that the subjects with the highest levels of vitamin C in their blood were 62 percent less likely to develop type 2 than the subjects with lower levels.

Fruit and vegetables were the subjects’ main sources of vitamin C. The researchers said that other factors commonly associated with a risk for diabetes, such as age, sex, smoking, family history, weight, and alcohol consumption, did not significantly alter the beneficial effects of vitamin C.

Is Gum Disease a Precursor to Diabetes?

If you have gum disease, your chances of developing type 2 diabetes are nearly double those of people who don’t have gum disease, according to researchers at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health in New York City.

That was their conclusion after a 20-year study that tracked 9,000 people without diabetes.

The presence of periodontal disease has often been noted as an accompaniment to diabetes, but nobody is sure whether it is a precursor to the disease or possibly even a contributing factor.

Because gum disease, like diabetes, involves tissue inflammation, there is some speculation that it is an indicator of susceptibility to inflammatory disease.

Thirty-five percent of adults have some form of gum disease, and one third of those experience a troubling level of infection.

Researchers don’t know what causes periodontal disease. Theories include genetics, smoking, and dry mouth caused by medications. Treatments include antibiotics, topical gels, extremely deep tooth cleaning, and even surgery to graft tissue from the roof of the mouth onto affected spots to encourage new gum growth.

The hope is that lowering the level of inflammation in the mouth may decrease the likelihood of inflammation developing elsewhere in the body.

Source: Diabetes Care, July 2008

An abundance of vitamin C in the diet may help lower a person’s risk of developing type 2 diabetes, new research suggests.

In a study of middle-aged and older men and women, those with the highest blood levels of vitamin C were significantly less likely to develop diabetes over 12 years than those with the lowest levels, researchers found.

Fruits and vegetables are the main source of vitamin C in Western diets, and blood levels of vitamin C are good markers of fruit and vegetable intake, Dr. Nita G. Forouhi, at the Institute of Metabolic Science at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, England, and colleagues note.

The current findings “re-endorse the public health message of the beneficial effect of increasing total fruit and vegetable intake,” the investigators wrote in Archives of Internal Medicine.

Forouhi’s team followed 21,831 healthy men and women who were 40 to 75 years old for the development of type 2 diabetes. At study entry, all participants provided detailed health and lifestyle information, as well as blood samples, which investigators used to determine vitamin C levels.

Over the course of the study, 423 men and 312 women developed type 2 diabetes, an overall rate of 3.2 percent.

According to the investigators, the likelihood of developing diabetes was 62 percent lower in men and women with the highest circulating vitamin C levels, relative to men and women with the lowest vitamin C levels.

Factoring out other characteristics associated with diabetes risk, such as older age, gender, family history, alcohol intake, physical activity, smoking status and body weight did not significantly alter these associations.

These data offer “persuasive evidence of a beneficial effect of vitamin C and fruit and vegetable intake on diabetes risk,” Forouhi and colleagues conclude.