Vitamin supplements help stroke survivors

Reported by Susan Aldridge, PhD, medical journalist

Patients taking folic acid and vitamin B12 after a stroke had a reduced risk of hip fracture, according to a new study.
Previous research has shown that stroke survivors have an increased risk of having a hip fracture. It's believed this might be linked to increased levels of the amino acid homocysteine. And one idea is that levels could be lowered by treating with the vitamins folic acid and vitamin B12.

The idea has been tested by a team at the Mitate Hospital, Tagawa, Japan. They gave a group of stroke survivors either 5 milligrams of folic acid and 1500 micrograms of vitamin B12 or placebo. Those in the vitamin group had six hip fractures while those in the placebo group had 27 hip fractures. The findings suggest that elevated homocysteine levels could indeed be a risk factor for fracture after a stroke. The good news is that vitamin supplementation seems to get around this problem.

Source
Journal of the American Medical Association 2nd March 2005 Volume 293 pages 1082-1088