Dietary intakes of antioxidant vitamins and mortality from cardiovascular disease: the Japan Collaborative Cohort Study (JACC) study.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Only a few reports have dealt with the association of antioxidant vitamin intakes with mortality or morbidity from cardiovascular disease in Asia. We investigated the relation of dietary vitamins A, E, and C intake with mortality from cardiovascular disease for Japanese men and women.

METHODS: The subjects were 23,119 men and 35 611 women aged 40 to 79 years without a history of cardiovascular disease or cancer who responded to the food frequency questionnaire as part of the Japan Collaborative Cohort Study for Cancer Risk (JACC) Study. They were followed up for a median period of 16.5 years. Hazard ratios were calculated per quintile of dietary vitamins A, E, and C intake by using Cox proportional hazard model.

RESULTS: During the 859,962 person-year follow-up, there were 2690 deaths (1343 men and 1347 women) from cardiovascular disease, comprising 1227 (607 men and 620 women) from stroke and 557 (311 men and 246 women) from coronary heart disease. The multivariable hazard ratios (95% CI) associated with the highest versus lowest quintiles of vitamin C intake were 0.70 (0.54 to 0.92) for total stroke, 0.63 (0.41 to 0.97) for coronary heart disease, and 0.79 (0.66 to 0.94) for total cardiovascular disease for women, but the inverse associations observed were weak and did not reach statistical significance for men. No significant association was observed between vitamins A or E intake and risk of mortality for either men or women.

CONCLUSIONS: Vitamin C intake is inversely associated with mortality from cardiovascular disease for Japanese women.