Folic acid, pyridoxine, and cyanocobalamin combination treatment and age-related macular degeneration in women: the Women's Antioxidant and Folic Acid Cardiovascular Study

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12) in this randomized controlled trial publication.

Observational epidemiologic studies indicate a direct association between homocysteine concentration in the blood and the risk of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), but randomized trial data to examine the effect of therapy to lower homocysteine levels in AMD are lacking.

Their objective was to examine the incidence of AMD in a trial of combined folic acid, pyridoxine hydrochloride (vitamin B(6)), and cyanocobalamin (vitamin B(12)) therapy.

Who Took Part

The study group was 5205 women.

PubMed indexes the participants as adults, middle-aged adults and older adults, women only.

A total of 5205 of these women did not have a diagnosis of AMD at baseline and were included in this analysis.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled.

Because people in this Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12) study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

Blinding on both sides kept the women and researchers unaware of who received Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12).

Some women received a placebo instead of Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12), giving a reference point.

The researchers conducted a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial including 5442 female health care professionals 40 years or older with preexisting cardiovascular disease or 3 or more cardiovascular disease risk factors.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Cardiovascular Diseases, Endpoint Determination, Folic Acid, Incidence, Macular Degeneration, Proportional Hazards Models and Pyridoxine.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12) in 5205 women.

With several hundred people or more, it is a fairly large study for this kind of research.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 3 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2009 (Archives of internal medicine), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12) compound page.