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Association of Plasma Vitamin C Concentration to Total and Cause-Specific Mortality: A 16-year Prospective Study in China

Association of Plasma Vitamin C Concentration to Total and Cause-Specific Mortality: A 16-year Prospective Study in China

Shao-Ming Wang, Jin-Hu Fan, Philip R Taylor, Tram Kim Lam, Sanford M Dawsey, You-Lin Qiao, Christian C Abnet

J Epidemiol Community Health. 2018 Dec;72(12):1076-1082.

PMID: 30100578

Abstract:

Background:
Vitamin C insufficiency occurs across many countries and has been hypothesised to increase risk of various diseases. Few prospective studies with measured circulating vitamin C have related deficiency to disease mortality, particularly in low-income and middle-income countries.
Methods:
We randomly selected 948 subjects (473 males and 475 females) aged 53-84 years from a Chinese cohort and measured meta-phosphoric acid-preserved vitamin C concentrations in plasma samples collected in 1999-2000. A total of 551 deaths were accrued from sample collection through 2016, including 141 from cancer, 170 from stroke and 174 from heart diseases. Vitamin C was analysed using season-specific quartiles, as a continuous variable and as a dichotomous variable based on sufficiency status (normal >28 µmol/L vs low ≤28 µmol/L). HRs and 95% CIs were estimated using Cox proportional hazards models.
Results:
We found significant inverse associations between higher plasma vitamin C concentrations and total mortality in quartile (HRQ4 vs Q10.75, 95% CI 0.59 to 0.95), continuous (HRq20umol/L0.90, 95% CI 0.82 to 0.99) and dichotomous analyses (HRnormal-vs-low0.77, 95% CI 0.63 to 0.95). We observed significant lower risks of heart disease (ptrend-by-quantile=0.03) and cancer deaths (pglobal-across-quantile=0.04) for higher vitamin C, whereas the association was attenuated for stroke in adjusted models. Similar inverse associations were found when comparing normal versus low vitamin C for heart disease (HRnormal-vs-low0.62, 95% CI 0.42 to 0.89).
Conclusion:
In this long-term prospective Chinese cohort study, higher plasma vitamin C concentration was associated with lower total mortality, heart disease mortality and cancer mortality. Our results corroborate the importance of adequate vitamin C to human health.

Chemicals Related in the Paper:

Catalog Number	Product Name	Structure	CAS Number	Price
AP37267860	meta-Phosphoric acid		37267-86-0	Price

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