SAN FRANCISCO--In the Aug.22/29 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) (286:936-43, 2001) (http://jama.ama-assn.org), researchers found that the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) 1998 mandate to fortify all enriched grain products with 140 mcg of folic acid per 100 g of bread may significantly decrease homocysteine levels, a factor in heart disease risk. In addition, the addition of vitamin therapy consisting of 1 mg of folic acid and 0.5 mg of cyanocobalamin (vitamin B12) may be a cost effective and efficacious way to lower homocysteine levels.

Using data gathered through the third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III), researchers found adults age 35 to 84 to benefit from both the fortification and vitamin therapies. Grain fortification with folic acid was estimated to decrease cardiovascular heart disease (CHD) by 8 percent in women and 13 percent in men. The study's model projected that over a 10-year period, patients with known CHD treated with folic acid and vitamin B12 may result in 310,000 fewer deaths and lower health costs. For those men and women without known CHD and taking grain fortified foods and vitamin supplementation, the researchers posed that quality of life would improve and more than $2 billion would be saved. The researchers, led by Jeffrey Tice, M.D., from the University of California based here, concluded that folic acid and vitamin B12 supplementation might have a major epidemiologic (lifetime) benefit in preventing CHD.